I shared my little advice from the benefit of experience. You see, last Wednesday I was on leave and I took the time during lunch hours to exchange for Chinese New Year New Dollars note. Yes, the choice of timing could not have been the most silly, since lunch time is always the peak hour where it comes to queuing and waiting. As such, I went into the bank branch with the expectation that I would need to wait for some time. I was ready to wait as I was armed with a book to read as usual so as to use the Best of my time when it comes to every waiting situation. But I was not prepared for what was to come then.
First the bank outlet was filled with customers and there was nowhere to sit. Thus, I was left “stranded” as I did not know what to do with more than 30 customers in front of me. First, I went to do a little window shopping. Then I came back, the queue hardly moved. Then it dawned on me that I had better thought of something to spend my time wisely else my waiting time and more importantly, my leave would be somehow wasted. After much thinking, I went to run one errand and went back to the bank after that. Again, the queue moved by only 10 customers. And what was worse, the bank started to update a “chart” to indicate that the new notes which I was intending to exchange for had run out!
Exasperated, I asked a banking executive whether what the “chart” meant was that my waiting time was wasted and I would not be able to get any new dollar notes. The banking executive pointed to a slip indicating a queue number pasted at a non-descript corner of the “chart” and highlighted that any queue number before the aforementioned queue number would be entitled to the new dollar notes. I was relieved since with a queue number before the one on the “chart”, I was assured of new dollar notes to exchange for.
After the above encounter, it took me a trip to the supermarket to buy some groceries and then back to the bank to wait for around 10 minutes before it was my turn to exchange for new dollar notes. In all, it took me a total of 80 minutes before I could finally be given the new dollar notes. And yes I was glad that I spent my time waiting for the new dollar notes productively after all despite not managing to read.
Last year, I was rather late to exchange for new dollar notes and I ended up making multiple trips to the community centre to exchange for “good-as-new” notes. My experiences exchanging for “good-as-new” notes mirrored that of the encounter for new notes shared in this post, there would be queues. There would be people ahead of you exchanging for lots of notes and the “good-as-new” notes would also run-out for the day if the supply could not catch up with demand.
Hence, my advice to All of You who would like to have new dollar notes for Chinese New Year is to exchange for the notes early. Be the first ones in the queue as soon as the bank opens to ensure a decent waiting time. Join the emailing list to receive regular Financial and Singapore stocks newsletters too! Like" me on Singapore Stocks Investing Facebook page to receive all posts on your Facebook as well as read more articles. Follow me on Twitter too.
