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Thursday, June 7, 2012

UOB's inflexibility over credit card payment annoys Shionge

      For blogger Shionge, her unhappiness with UOB started when she  received a new UOB Visa card to replace the one that was expiring soon.      
      She says: "I took it along with me to Hong Kong and started using it for my first transaction in Macau Hard Rock Hotel.  It didn't go through.
     "Luckily, a friend used her Visa to pay for me."
     Shionge says she found it strange that the UOB Visa transaction could not go through.  So she tried another outlet --- G2000 -- and  again it failed to be cleared.
    "For a moment I thought the card was faulty and I was embarrassed that it had been rejected twice," Shionge says.
    "I returned to Singapore and told the bank about this, and it was then that I was told by the Customer Service Officer that for a new replacement card, I must inform them before I leave the country so that they could 'activate' it for overseas transactions."
     Her question to the officer was: Why didn't the bank inform her about this in the first place??
     Shionge's annoyance did not end there. While she was on the line with the officer, she requested for a short extension of the due date for next month's payment as she was going to be away again in mid-June till early July. This was to avoid the late payment penalty.
     She says UOB's due date usually falls on the 3rd or 4th day of the month but she will only be back in Singapore on July 6.
     Shionge says her request was rejected by the officer without any consideration.
     "I told the bank officer that I am making known to them that I will be travelling and by rejecting me outright, they are merely discouraging customers from carrying their UOB credit cards overseas," she says.
      Shionge thinks that the bank's accounting system can be more flexible.  "Afterall,  I have been a loyal customer and pay my bills promptly," she adds.
      Maybe the moral of the story is:  Loyalty does not pay!

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