pearls of wisdom

Just had one of my wisdom teeth extracted. In the middle of applications, interviews, presentations and the upcoming Finance final exam, I just flew to Valencia to go to the dentist. It all has gone well except for some nerves before the operation and a bit of uncomfort now.

Still, coming home feels good. It's been a really sunny day, some 16ºC (max is 22ºC, in February!!). Unfortunately, having the mouth almost paralised with the anesthesia means I cannot enjoy Spanish food as much...:(

Anyway, this gives me time to catch up with reading, start preparing the Spanish Career Trek to Madrid in May (which I am co-organizing), and continue getting ready for my many crack-a-case interviews next week. Any advice on how to solve them will be appreciated...

tired of bad service

One of the things that one sets up a blog for is whining. So, please allow me to rant a bit about my latest bad experience with a customer-disoriented organization: a bank.

I had to transfer funds from Spain to my UK account in order to satisfy the London Business School's fees. It is a hefty sum, not a small transaction. Well, even after ordering it more than 3 weeks ago, this transaction has never been executed. I am transferring funds between subsidiaries of the same "global bank" in Spain and the UK. And not only they don't execute the transfer (hey, isn't it about "pressing a button" somewhere??? I thought all this day-to-day processes are automated even in regional savings banks!!!!). What is worse, I keep calling their phone banking service and they keep telling me they don't know what went wrong, but that there's nothing they can do. They have not even called me once to tell me there's a problem, it was me who had to call and ask....

Bottomline: the funds haven't arrived yet and I will probably have to pay an extra fee to the School because of the delay.

My takeaways, then: don't believe the myth, there is no such thing as a global bank! And second, it is hard to deal with an organization when one has such little bargaining power (Porter dixit). Next time I'll pretend I'm a business to see if they get preferential service...

Epilogue: Had to file a complaint, and am still waiting for their reply

Question: anybody can guess which bank lacks the most elemental customer service???