...bank customers recount tearful experience leading to the yuletide
...Fidelity Bank put measures in place to promptly correct dispense errors, eliminate uneccesary delays
By OLORUNDARE ENIMOLA
Dispense error occurs when you are debited without the transaction being completed, be it a transfer, withdrawal or bills payment. You then have to go to the bank and waste time to lodge the complaint.
The most commonly experienced by Nigerians is when cash is not dispensed from the ATM but the exact amount debited from your account or your transaction fails at the point of making payments via POS but your account is also debited for the same value.
The Christmas and the New Year celebrations are the most highly celebrated occasions in the country, it is a highly frenzied period with lots of pulsating activities geared towards maximizing the season and making it a memorable one. Nigerians make loads of purchases of foods, drinks, and clothing, send gifts to loved ones and practically want to do something new or the other.
This is the period with lots of end of year parties, ‘get-to-gethers’, house warming, re-unions, award ceremonies and many other activities requiring large volume of financial transactions.
However, many people, especially those relying on the banks for their various transfers and remittances will be very disappointed owing to the present epileptic networking system of our banks, who are technologically behind in what is required to have seamless electronic transactions as it is obtainable in advanced climes.
Investigations by correspondents of www.thelandmarkinfo.com, reveals that since the start of the ‘ember months’, many bank customers, have been contending with the menace of dispense errors that failed to be reversed in weeks and some for months.
The question on the lips of these bank customers is; if we experience so many dispense errors in the months leading to the Yuletide, what will happen during Christmas week and the New Year celebrations when financial transactions are expected to quadruple?
More painful to them is the flouting of the order given by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, which gave the timeframes for the resolutions of all botched online transfers, POS transactions, and ATM withdrawals in their domiciled banks to be reversed instantly. In the event that instant reversal fails due to technical challenges, the money must be manually reversed within a 24-hour period.
Similarly, the resolutions for failed ATM withdrawals occurring when bank customers use their ATM cards on other banks should not exceed 48 hours. The CBN also said, banks will be required to resolve all disputed/failed online transfers and POS transactions within 72 hours. In other words, resolution for such disputes shall no longer be taking five working days as it used to.
Alas, the time taken on average is 10 working days. If this is to be the standard at this yuletide season, then many bank customers may have to spend their Christmas and New Year celebrations in the cold, only to have their monies refunded way long after the celebrations are over!
Many bank customers are therefore expressing concerns over the recurrent failure of Point of Sales’, PoS transactions.
In most cases when the transactions on PoS terminals failed, bank customers were debited and the transactions not reverted for days on end.
To get a refund after failed transactions is sometimes very tedious as complaints would not yield a positive response. In some cases, the customers have had to forego their savings in situations where the banks did not reverse the transaction.
Despite assurances of automatic reversal within 24 hours, some bank customers said it took more than a month to get a refund. Below are accounts from customers (without their real names), who expressed their painful experience with dispense errors.
An Ikeja based customer of one of the banks, Alfred Okeke, said the first attempt to use a PoS terminal to pay for some drugs worth N12,650 at a pharmaceutical store along Olowu street was not successful, but was surprised when he received a debit alert from his bank instantly.
According to him, he waited for about an hour for a reversal, and that was not done, he had to get the money through another means to pay.
“I reached out to the customer services of the bank and it took up to a month for the reversal to be effected, which affected my further purchase of the drugs, making the sickness linger more than necessary on me.” Okeke said.
An Ibadan-based entrepreneur of another bank, Mojisola Adedokun, also shared her experience, saying all her savings were lost when she tried to pay for some groceries with her debit card.
According to her, the payment was declined twice and a total of N24,000, was debited from her bank account.
“The N24,000 was all I had left in my bank account and it was not reversed. It was back and forth with the bank for two weeks before the money was returned. I had to borrow money from friends to survive during that period. If cashless payment is not working, the government should abandon the PoS and let us keep paying with cash,” she lamented.
Stanley Amaziro, a creative writer, also complained of a declined transaction of N3,000 that was debited from his bank account.
Gideon Ogbedoze, a public health expert, complained of no reversal of N5,080 that was wrongfully debited from his Bank account for more than a month despite declined payment on PoS.
Meanwhile, checks by our correspondent also showed that most of these banks are guilty of making their customers suffer dispense errors and delay in the reversal of such errors.
Due to high incidence of dispense errors, there are many cases pending in various High Courts in Nigeria and many more customers are threatening to go to court to sue for damages arising from these errors, if they suffer similar fate in the course of this yuletide celebrations.
When contacted, officials of Fidelity bank gave the following explanation regarding the preparedness of the bank to ensure such occurrence are reduced to the barest minimum.
According to Adebowale Banzi, Team Lead
Media & Internal Communication, Fidelity Bank Nigeria PLC, he said, "For the holiday season, Fidelity Bank is leaving no stone unturned in ensuring that our customers enjoy seamless service.
"All our E-Channels will be available during the holiday period for use by our customers including the ATMs, Online Banking, Instant Banking, IVY chat bot and POS. Also, customers can leverage on our Area Konnect agency banking outlets scattered across the country to carry out their transactions.
"Our 24/7 contact center -Truserve- can be reached via 0700 343 35489 for regular calls, 0903 000 5252 for Whatsapp or [email protected] for emails. Our agents are available to address customers’ enquiries 24/7." He added.
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