Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Ghost of A Machine: ATM Blues

Last Saturday was going to be the quintessential super Saturday. I planned thus. First thing in the morning, I'd get the hell outta house, goto university labs, meet up with the top engineer in my project team, talk, get stuff done, by which time another top man from another campus would've joined us. Then we'd go out and spend the better part of the day doing life-is-good stuff like gadget shopping, eating out and going to movies. But ole Murph was to raise 'is ugly head.

To do stuff, one needs money. So I headed up the small hill towards Sri Lanka's richest state-owned bank, where I proudly bank my fortunes. Pant upto the ATM. No one in sight cause it's still a bit early. Pop in my card. Aaah, life is good.

The ATM asked me to punch in my PIN, which I sleepily did. Then, it asked me the service and the amount, which I promptly punched in. Then, after all this, it suddenly says, “Transaction Cannot Be Completed: Invalid PIN!!”

Now wait one darn minute. Wrong PIN? Okay, but why not tell me the second I punch it in? why say after all this? Typical girl. I'm a Web engineer by day job, and my code would tell you the second you enter wrong authentication information. Period. That's the way I've used to get machines work. Are ATM's engineered along a different philosophy? or is this darn slimeball broken? I punch cancel, get the card out, and then try again. The same story. Did I change my PIN? Negative, if yeh ask me. I don't remember changing the PIN, not really. Actually, once in a blue moon I've used that ATM system. What could be wrong? And my super Saturday was tapping its foot impatiently.

OK, this might be broken. I didn't like the look of the machine even. It was, well.. hah. Even the by-screen buttons were out of alignment with the screen. I had to count the options from bottom, and again count the buttons from the bottom to find the right button for an option. Fine, try the next town.

There stuff look like a bit matching to the Richest State Bank thing. The ATM machine is crisp and new, there's music blaring in the cubicle, and I pop in the card. Grr. Same story. Get my card, show me her everything, ask me everything, and then say the PIN is wrong. Try a second time, and super Grr. She decided to retain my card.

I'm positive for about 99.9% that I didn't change the PIN. Usually I don't use the card. The account was operated by my dad usually, and I know he doesn't know how to change the PIN and let's face it, dads aren't that tech savvy. What he does everytime he forgets it is ask me the number and I give it.

From all state banks like Peoples' and Ceylon, NSB is humane. The service is better markedly I think. But the ATM is kaput I think. Perhaps the database is corrupt. I wonder what they use. Perhaps the IBM iSeries and DB2? Most banks use it. It's reliable, but I can't be too sure till I go pit my wits one-on-one against their IT division and get the thing sorted out. Let battle commence!

No comments: