We refer to the letters, "Some seniors sat on floor to rest while queueing at pop-up ATM", "DBS system for online reservation of notes not well designed" and "Still no success on second attempt to reserve notes online", all published on Jan 27.
We know that Chinese New Year is a very special occasion for many of us. Heralding the new year with the tradition of exchanging red packets is something we all look forward to.
This year, however, with safety measures in place, we anticipated that it would be more challenging for customers to get new notes and doubled our online reservation slots.
We also added 21 more new notes ATMs, totalling 61 new notes ATMs across 41 locations. This is in addition to our more than 1,200 ATMs islandwide.
We also took safety precautions such as having capacity limits at our branches and deploying safety ambassadors to ensure customers practise safe distancing.
However, we saw overwhelming demand for new notes in the first week of distribution, resulting in unacceptably long wait times in some locations. This is understandably very frustrating, and we are sorry for the inconvenience caused.
We have since implemented new steps to ease the situation by:
• Placing more chairs for seniors waiting in line;
• Providing customers with timely updates on estimated wait times;
• Employing additional engineers to be on hand to fix any new notes ATM issues.
In the meantime, the following options are also available:
• Customers can obtain notes from our network of more than 1,200 regular ATMs, which are available round-the-clock;
• They can also consider alternatives such as the DBS QR Gift, which preserves the tradition of exchanging red packets. From now till Feb 2, customers can order DBS QR Gift cards online (go.dbs.com/sg-qrgiftorder), which we will mail to them for free.
Customers can also get DBS QR Gift cards at all 63 Sheng Siong outlets from today to Feb 11, and Esso service stations from Feb 6 onwards, while stocks last.
We thank our customers for their patience and will continue to work on giving them a better experience. Wishing everyone a safe and happy Chinese New Year.
Jeremy Soo
Head, Consumer Banking Group, DBS Singapore
