3 Cool Things About Swedish Bank

So I got pick-pocketed few days ago when I was traveling in Athens. Always thought that I am a skeptical person and will not be easily snatched by pickpocket. I was wrong. Don’t really feel a thing when that happened. Seeing the good side, it is only my wallet. My phone and passport is safe. However, in that wallet, there are couple of important thing as well. One of them is my Swedish bank ATM card, with all my scholarship money inside.

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First cool thing: Quick response over social media

Since it will be really bad if the thief can broke in to that card and take my money, I quickly sit in a quiet place to think. I should block that card. To do that I probably need to call the bank, or maybe they can do it over the chat box? I asked myself. Using the Wi-Fi provided in the information center, I check my bank website for contact. My bank is SEB, one of the biggest bank in Sweden. So they wrote that they can be contacted via Facebook fan page as well. So I did. This is the first good thing about my bank: they are quick to answer the chat. One of the customer service greeted me and ask what they can do for me. I explain my case, but unfortunately to block the card, I need to call the bank.

Second: Call back feature

My experience with calling banks in my country Indonesia, was not so good. There is always this infinity queue on the phone. Plus now that I am in Greece, I will use lot more phone credit due to roaming. I don’t even know if my credit is enough to last few minutes of talk. Anyway I did call the bank. As I thought, the line is busy.

“Our customer service is busy at the moment. Please hold on” (beep). The machine told me.

Few seconds later, the machine speaks again. However this time, I am not familiar with his line. “You can keep waiting, or have us call you when your queue is up.  Please leave your number and press hashtag”. I was like, “Oh they can really do this?”

I entered my number as the machine told me to do and hung up the phone. I was about to tell my wife beside me about this cool feature, when my phone rings. It is from bank! I thought I need to wait like minutes before I get the call. Cool stuff number two from SEB.

Sometimes I like to express my feelings. By the time I pick up the call, I told the person on the other side, “Wow you really call. It’s a very useful feature, this calling bank things”. Well, of course. During a busy day, with this feature, we can continue our activity and not being on the phone waiting.

I tell the lady about my case and my plan to block the card. She did it after asking my personnummer (Swedish personal number). Not only blocked my card, she also offers if I want to order a new one, so when I get home, the new card will be ready. I can’t help feeling awesome about this bank. I mean, they really make it easy for everything. I have to reject her because I thought the validation will be lot of steps and it is probably good to do that once I got home in Stockholm again. So I have all the bank papers, documents, and so on.

Third awesome thing: Super easy

Few days later, I arrived home safely and made the call to SEB again. Ready with passports, resident permit card, and other documents I thought I need.

“Sure, we can help you right away. Do you have SEB token with you?” She asked.

I grab the small green device.

“Can you login and just press 1 after that?”

I did what she told me. After pressing 1, some numbers appear and I read it to her.

“Thank you. That will be all. You have been validated. We will send new card and new pin code to you between 2 to 5 working days. You still live in previous address?”

Say again? I mean, it is kind of too easy to validate this, don’t you think? In Indonesia I even need to come to the bank, getting in line with more than 20 people, and even before that, I have to go to police station to report my stolen wallet and ATM card inside, get the report and use that police report for the bank to process my new card request.

I just skip that few hours step with few minute calls and validation with a token. Which back home we do have token too, but we don’t use it for this matter.

So that cool thing number three from my bank. Probably other Swedish bank have this kind of benefit too. Today is day four after I call them, and I already got my new card. Thank you awesome bank!

/Satu