My adaption process in Cyprus was smoother than I expected. After three weeks home, I feel like that I never left Cyprus despite the fact that I still get frustrated with some things. A great example of these, are ATMs which their operational mechanism has been altered recently.

In fact, some ATMs provide your money first and then your credit card which I find very wrong! Why? Let’s assume the following scenario: it’s night, I need urgently one hundred pounds — I drive to the nearest ATM, insert my credit card, then my pin number and eventually get my money. Since my mission (to get some money) is accomplished, I return back to my car fully satisfied that my wallet is full again. Meanwhile, ATM ejects my credit card making the day for the next customer. The chances are I will not notice that my credit card is missing until the next time I will need it. Too late, don’t you think?

Things are getting even worse when someone takes into consideration that until few weeks ago, ATMs were ejecting your credit card first. It goes without saying that the action of receiving the money has been associated as the last action of the transaction by many people, making the process even more error-prone.

I don’t know what led to these changes but my guess is a bad updating process. I expect that the corresponding support centers will accept a large number of incoming calls regarding missing cards. Hopefully, after a lot of complaints the original operational mechanism will be restored.