SBI ATM story

5th April, 2006

I was in need of some 200 bucks which I needed to pay at the RTO office located at Khadki. I had never been to khadki before. But I was sure that there would be some ATM in the vicinity. I had ATM cards for my accounts with SBI, BOB and HDFC. So I started my quest for ATM hunting. I first went to a UTI ATM. It was unfortunately short of cash. Then I scourged the whole area running around for ATMs, I found 5 SBI ATMs and 2 UTI ATMs. But I wasnt able to get money from any of them. This was due to the SBI bank employee strike. Finally I got to an ICICI bank ATM and removed cash through by BOB card, which cost me Rs.55 for cross-bank transaction.

This was an unfortunate incident that might have happened to many people who were running arond like me during those strike prone days. But this reveals that Indian people are also benefitting from the use of latest technology. Rural people have also started relying upon ATMs for their cash needs. This would work in favour of SBI bank which has the most ATMs in the non-urban areas. Also, I noticed this cool feature in SBI ATM at Koregaon park, it had ATM locator which showed all the SBI ATMs across India. I was impressed.