I refer to the letter ASM shares: Maybank so lame .

There may be some confusion in the minds of the public as regards the Amanah Saham Malaysia (ASM) issue on April 23 and the Amanah Saham Wawasa (ASW) issue on April 27.

The ASM issue of April 23 had three tranches - bumiputera, Chinese, Indians and ‘others'. The Chinese tranche has been fully subscribed to while both the bumi and Indian tranches remain under-subscribed.

Those Indians who did not get any ASM units on April 23 or managed to get less than 20,000 units per person can still go to any branch of Permodalan Nasional Bhd or any participating bank such as Maybank and CIMB to top up their accounts so long as there remain unsold units of the Indian tranche.

ASM has not announced if it will open up the under-subscribed bumi tranche to the Indians, Chinese and ‘others'.

With regards to the ASW issue on April 27, there were only two tranches; bumi and non-bumi. The non-bumi portion was fully subscribed to and so no Indian or Chinese can apply for units or top up anymore, unless ASW opens up the under-subscribed bumi portion to all. So far, there has not been any news on this from ASW either.

My own experience with Maybank, Wisma Consplant Subang Jaya, as opposed to Maybank USJ 10 Taipan is telling!

At Maybank Wisma Consplant SJ, despite getting queue number ‘7' (the bank opened its doors officially at 9.15 am), I did not make it to the counter until about 11am. On presenting my application, I was told that I needed to produce my children's birth certificates to prove they were my children. Both my children have IC's but are below 18 years of age.

When I informed the bank officer that the Maybank USJ 10 Taipan had not asked for these documents when I had applied for the ASM units on 23rd April, they would not budge.

In fact, I was not required to produce my children at Maybank USJ 10 Taipan on April 23 and they were kind enough to process the applications and hold the account books for a week since only then were my children able to present themselves to the bank April 27 was a school holiday for them following their annual sports day the previous week-end.

The senior bank officer at Maybank Wisma Consplant, however, would not allow the counter staff to process my children's application even when my wife volunteered to rush back and get the relevant birth certificates.

As a result of these ad hoc rules, my children were unable to secure any units while my wife and I were successful. By the time my wife returned with the birth certificates, the non-bumi units had all been sold out. The last queue number processed was number ‘10' or ‘11' and the counters were closed at about 11.30 am.

Despite my irritation and raising my voice a trifle, the staff at Maybank Wisma Consplant SJ were quite professional albeit unnecessarily bureaucratic if not unreasonable.

However the staff at Maybank USJ 10 Taipan had been far more accommodating and people/ customer centric. At no time at either branch of Maybank did I get a sense of racism at all. So, kudos to the bank staff at both Maybank branches.

One of the main problems with these ASM/ASW issues is that most banks have only one PNB terminal and one counter handling customers. Processing is often slow because of multiple applications by each family not to mention strangers posing as family to beat the queue!

My advice for the future is for investors to go direct to PNB's offices and apply there. I believe PNB opens its counters at 8 am as opposed to 9.15 am by most commercial banks. It is also puzzling why Public Bank and Affin Bank do not handle PNB issues.