Card swallowed by ATM machine not retrieved in timely fashion by bank

Dear Editor,

On the morning of Saturday, October 29, I visited Republic Bank’s New Market Street branch to utilize the services of the ATM machine. However, while in the process of doing my transaction the machine went down and as a consequence my card got stuck in the machine.

I then went to speak to an employee of the bank and upon explaining to her what happened, she informed me that they have no one working on weekends to deal with the problem and that I would have to wait until Monday to retrieve my card.  Well of course this was very upsetting and of great inconvenience to me.  However having no other choice I waited for Monday and to my utter disgust when I contacted the Water Street Branch Accounts Department, I was told that due to the fact that the bank does not work on weekends and also that the ATM machines are not cleared every day, I would now have to wait until Wednesday morning after 10 am to retrieve my card, or alternatively I can cancel that card and uplift a new card for a charge of one thousand dollars.  Now I find this to be absolutely ridiculous; the machine being down was no fault of mine, and I might add also that this particular machine at New Market Street branch is forever having problems.  Now why is it that I, the customer , who was inconvenienced for the entire weekend due to Republic Bank’s inefficiency have to pay a fee in order to get back a card in a timely manner, or wait another two days?

 Yours faithfully,
(Name and address provided)

Editor’s note
We are sending a copy of this letter to Ms Michelle Johnson, Marketing & Communications Manager of Republic Bank for any comment she might wish to make.