My Preferred Transaction

Like most of us, I have been communicating with banks perfectly successfully for many years. I have rarely had any trouble telling my bank how much money I want to take out, how much money I want to put in, or finding out how much money I have in my account.

But in the last couple of years, something has gone terribly wrong with the way in which I am forced to communicate with my bank. In particular, something has gone wrong with the screen instructions in the ATM machines belonging to my bank, whose name begins with C and ends with B.

It all began when they changed the text that appears on the screen when you use the ATM machine. When I first started using my bank's ATMs, it was relatively simple. I put my card in the slot, punched in my pin number, and selected the service I wanted and the amount of money I wanted to take out, or whatever. Then, the dialogue would close down when the machine asked me if I wanted a receipt. I would select YES, and the machine would tell me to retrieve my card and take my money. Easy.

But for some unknown reason, around two or three years ago, the bank added an extra question to the ATM dialogue. Nowadays, as soon as you have selected the amount of cash you want to withdraw, you are asked "do you wish to save this as your preferred transaction?"

I remember being utterly flabbergasted when I first encountered this utterly cryptic question. I thought I was having a Senior Moment. What on earth does it mean? Is it asking me if I want to do the same transaction again? Or is it asking me to save this transaction so that it automatically comes up when I use the ATM again? And if that's the case, what if I want to transfer money next time, or see how my shares are doing?!

So all I can do when I face this question is to select NO and carry on. Because with a PhD in linguistics, I cannot for the life of me work out what that question means.

And that's not the worst linguistic conundrum my bank has created for us cryptology experts who regularly use its ATMs in Kuching. Recently, they changed the dialogue for transferring money from your account to someone else's - something I do every month when I send money to my son in KL.

Previously, the transfer dialogue went something like this:

ATM: "Select from the following: deposit, withdrawal, check balance, transfer."

YOU: Select "Transfer"

ATM: "Please enter account you are sending from"

YOU: Enter account number

ATM: "Please enter amount"

YOU: Enter amount

ATM: "Please confirm if correct"

YOU: Confirm

Then the name of the account recipient is displayed on the screen, you press YES, and everything is fine and dandy.

But now, this simple procedure has been made more difficult by a level of linguistic mystification not seen this side of an official form. This is what happens now when you try to transfer money using my bank's ATMs. After selecting 'TRANSFER' from the menu, you get this:

ATM: Please select to account: (which is completely ungrammatical by the way!)

:Your account
:Third Party

Well, I guess I can't transfer money to my own account, so I have to select "Third Party", which actually doesn't make sense, but makes more sense than the alternative...

ATM: Please select from account (again, utterly ungrammatical!)

I guess this means that I have to tell it where the money is coming from. Isn't this obvious? Surely it's my account, right? Well, the ATM then shows a string of numbers at the top left of the screen which you then have to select. I guess that's my account number. Weird!!

Then, once I've done that, I am asked to type the amount of money I want to transfer, then I have to verify the transaction by viewing the details of the recipient as before. Then I can retrieve my card and receipt.

Now, why on earth do they have to make a simple procedure more complex and confusing by screwing up the language used in the dialogue? Why can't they use a dialogue that is short and straightforward and b****y grammatical? Why use confusing terms like 'to account' and 'third party'? Do they think we're stupid? Or is this some arcane code created by a hyper-intelligent race from another planet intended to hypnotise us?

I just don't have a clue. After all, I'm just a foreigner, what do I know?!?!