Dear Editor,
Demerara Bank often boasts its indigeneity and commitment to Guyanese but treats the very customers to allow their doors to be opened, like dirt. As a matter of fact, all six banks have similar if not identical operational procedures, so they all share the faults similarly as well.
One of the biggest shafting by DBL is their salary payment system.
Most workplaces now enforce that their employees’ salaries be paid through a bank account, rather than paying them cash. This is already a risk to the employee because now they have to physically go to an ATM to withdraw their salary, after whatever hour they sign off from work. But why care about your own employees’ safety and convenience when you can be strengthening relations between your business and the bank?
The bank then charges between GYD100-200 per employee, to post salary to an employee’s bank account. Some (very few) workplaces choose to absorb this cost by sending the transactional fees separately from the salaries (God bless those workplaces), but most would instruct that this charge be debited from the individual employee’s salary, which in a lot of cases, is already small, to begin with.
Please note the process of uploading the payroll to individual bank accounts is no strenuous work, other than to plug a flash drive into a computer that electronically uploads the files. Once the salaries are paid into the bank accounts (at whatever time the bank staff decides is convenient to him or her, the employee has to sit and wait and call the bank numerous times, to withdraw their salary.
Now for the fun part. The employee is charged again to withdraw their own money! Charges are between GYD50-100 per withdrawal. The maximum amount per ATM withdrawal is GYD40,000, and if you wish to withdraw more than this (because the geniuses at the bank have decided why should you need more money than this) then you are charged another GYD50-100!
As though that is not appalling enough, for their convenience, the bank has applied further restrictions to your account so that you are only allowed to withdraw a maximum of GYD120,000 (GYD40000*3) + charges of GYD150-300 per day. Do you need more??
Come back tomorrow afternoon late or come and join the ridiculously long lines inside the bank to beg our staff for your money. The attitudes and lack of efficiency of these bank employees is another story that I will address in another letter.
At this point, what even is the point of banking your money at these ‘institutions’?
Almost all bank transactions are handled electronically. It costs the bank little to nothing and yet they hit you with overdraft fees, credit card late payment fees, minimum balance and maintenance fees, returned cheque fees, ATM withdrawal fees, ATM deposit, paper statement fees, returned mail fees, foreign transaction fees, credit card interest rates, stop payment fees, wire transfer fees, toilet fees, nose-wiping fees, etc.
What modern-day professional slavery is this? Hasn’t your bank shaken you down for enough of your hard-earned cash?
The power lies with the people. We are the ones who need to make a stand against all the shafting meted out by the banks. They are not the ones for us.
And to the banks, especially Demerara Bank Limited, the only Guyanese-owned bank in Guyana: Do Better.
Sincerely,
Naiad A
