I told a short story of the service level of banks in China yesterday. In the story, a foreigner argued with the teller that the teller should help to fill in the form for him. Many people commented on the story. They shared their diversified view from Japan and U.S.

WilliamW believes it is the service mentality instead of language barrier that caused the problem. WilliamW also asked about the situation of smaller banks like China Merchant Banks.

JH argued “Unless there are some major holes in the current system of that bank, filling in an application form should have nothing to do with the customer’s authorization of accessing the money in the account.”

Billy was so nice to bring out the idea to take pictures of all the application form and help to translate English into Chinese annotations and post it to the web to help foreigners to survive.

Micah talked about his experience of working “under rules that seem to run against common sense” in a large chain book store. Micah suggested that “When a customer runs up against a rule like that, the best the she/he can do is ask to talk to the person who makes the rules and can override them: the manager. There’s no shame in asking to speak to a manager.”

Xu praised the extended service hours of banks in China. “Each bank here Japan is to be closed in exact 3 PM, and of course no Saturday and Sunday service.” He wondered “how a full-time job employee can catch time to visit a bank? or leave it all to his full-time housekeeper wife ? Sigh …”

Brad was lucky since the teller Brad met helped him to fill in the form. I wonder whether the “against-common-sense” policy is branch specific policy or the teller Brad met did the right thing by breaking the rule. Who knows?

Tane had different point of view and asked “why the foreginers kept arguing with the bank clerks while people waited in a long line. If it’s the way to do in there, let’s do it in that way.”

Well. It is a great discussion thread. Inspired by your comments, I want to share more about my personal experience with the major banks in China. Let’s start with ICBC.