Written By: Marwan A. Kardoosh
Today is December 15, 2008 and still money hasn’t arrived in my UK MasterCard account, nor has the bank agreed to return the money that was never delivered. Of course, I could have easily resolved this had I made a few phone calls to some of the bank’s senior management. I didn’t because I wanted to see how the “system” deals with irregularities. Sadly, but expectedly, it failed!
To make matters worse, I naively gave the bank another inch of credit a few days ago by trusting the “artificial intelligence” of its online service. I basically logged into my account and requested a new cheque book. I then received a reference number for that request. What I didn’t notice is that my balance was a few piasters short of JD 1, which is how much an Arab Bank cheque book costs. This meant that my cheque-book request was canceled without anyone telling me. I only discovered this when I called the bank’s call center this morning to ask if I can go to my branch to pick up my cheque book. Upon hearing the yet-again piece of ridicule news, I asked for the email of the Abdoun-branch manager so I can send him a written complaint but was told it is against the bank’s policy to give out an employee’s email address. Can you believe this?! I personally can’t…
The customer-service representative recommended I go to the closest branch to deposit 1JD in my account and resubmit a request for a cheque book. Imagine, they expect me to leave work and drive to a branch just to deposit 1JD. I had no option but to ask my mother to go and deposit 5JD just so I can resubmit my request for a cheque book.