Public Bank Can You Not Dumb

Today I received an email from Public Bank titled – PBe Login Reminder. Now, before you jump to a conclusion where this will be another story about online scams. No, this is actually a legit reminder email from Public Bank. For those who don’t know, most of the online banking system has a function whereby it will temporarily freeze your online login if they detected you have not been login in for quite a while. It is a safety feature and every bank has a different threshold.

In the email, I’m greeted by a lovely customer service lady stock photo telling me that I have not been login into my PBe account for over 2 months.

They even included a list of reasons why I should experience PBe online banking.

All these might seem normal as they’re trying to bring back their customer but the main problem is – I’ve been using their PB Engage Mobile App all these while, at least once a week on top of that. Can’t they AT LEAST synchronize among themselves?

Now before you start saying how app and web are two separate platforms and it is completely normal to remind me to log in to the web platform if I haven’t done so for 2 months. The email has specifically told us that we can access PBe anywhere with the PB engage app. See the problem? They are literally encouraging you to use the mobile app yet their system somehow never really synchronize nor update the code that sends the login reminder. Besides, I’m viewing this email on a desktop and the email content is designed for mobile, how ironic is that.

This is not the first time I received this reminder, in fact, ever since they updated the new PB engage app, I’ve started receiving this reminder which explains the obvious oversight by their developer team. I don’t know why none of their developers found out this issue, or if anyone in Public Bank higher-ups actually uses the mobile app exclusively like me. Frankly speaking, this is dumb.

The banking industry has one of the most rigid organizations ever. They are not fond of change because it involves risk and a huge sum of the cost to it. Even pushing online banking is a massive challenge and it took them YEARS to actually roll out a system that doesn’t suck. Sometimes it can be due to strict regulations and compliances they need to follow which ultimately limits their flexibility at offering a system with a decent user experience, otherwise, it can simply be the leaders of the software development team is incompetent. Nothing beats it when you have both problems on hand.