Found: My $1066.46

This is in response to my post, Finding: My $1066.46, about the bad service I received from Standard Chartered’s contact centre.

Where I last left off, I went down to the branch and the person there told me that he will get someone from their customer care team to call me on the day itself. The person didn’t call me until 8pm that night. She basically told me the same thing, that I have to wait for at least 2 working days before she can give me reply.

Wait again? Your call centre told me I have to wait for 2 days a week ago! And now you’re telling me the same thing?

Feeling a little disgruntled, I copied and paste my entire experience and emailed it to their regional CEO. Yes, you heard me. I had to resort to emailing the CEO.

I’m not sure if it was actually the CEO’s mailbox but an hour after my email, I received a reply from the CEO thanking me for bringing the situation to his attention and he will get someone to attend to me for a prompt solution.

An hour later, I received a call from their customer care team. I was occupied at that time so I got the lady to call me back at 2pm. At 2pm, the person called and she told me that she will cancel the e-Cashier order and return me the money. 30 minutes later, I was told to verify some details of mine and awhile later, the money was back in my StanChart account.

Relieved girl I am.

But seriously, it’s such a simple resolution! And if I have to escalate the issue to your CEO every single time for something to happen, there must be something seriously wrong.

On top of that, StanChart also send me the following items as part of their service recovery effort.

a hamper.

an apology letter and Taka vouchers.

I really don’t care about the goodies (the hamper goodies were given away). I just want assurance that no such incident will happen again. And really, does service recovery work? For me, my image of StanChart is damaged. I am scared of doing transactions using that account. I think when a situation actually require service recovery, it is already a situation that CANNOT be resolved. Regardless of how expensive your goodies are.

With that said, I guess it’s the thought that counts? *shrugs*

On Wednesday night around 10+pm, I transferred a small amount from StanChart to Citibank via StanChart’s Breeze application’s Any Card options. I ensured my Citibank account no was there and everything was correct. Under the T&C, it was said that if the amount was transferred before 11pm, the amount will be transferred in 2 working days. TWO working days = FRIDAY.

On Friday evening, I called to check my Citibank account balance, nothing has changed. Okay, StanChart. Now what? I will have to check my account balance again on Monday and if there’s nothing, I have to call StanChart again? Oh no.

*fingers crossed*

Did the officers @ AMK North Police Station lie?

I’m really sorry that 4 consecutive post of mine are all complains. Initially, I wanted to keep quiet about this but after receiving a call from the Traffic Police, I feel that I should talk about this.

The lowdown

On the morning of the 15th, I was caught for jaywalking at the traffic light in front of AMK MRT station. There was a group of us who jaywalked but as they were all pretending not to notice the officers (by looking down and walking really quickly), the officer did not approach them to copy their names.

As luck would have it, I was unlucky to a)not spot the TPs and b)to have looked up and made eye-contact with the TP. I handled over my IC and asked if it was fair for him to let those in front of me passed. He ignored me. A foreigner was also unlucky like me and he asked what did he do wrong. The officer also IGNORED him. I had to step in and answer for the officer and that was when the TP made a snide remark at me.

I was allowed to go WITHOUT an explanation of what happened and what is going to happen.

The calls to AMK NPC

Feeling a little weird and frustrated, I called AMK NPC because it’s the nearest police station to the MRT station.

The officer I spoke to told me –

a) It was their officers who were there at the traffic junction
b) My information were taken down for record purposes
c) No summon will be given

The officer also told me that he will double-check for me and he will call me back.

At 11pm, no calls. So I called AMK NPC again.

Again, the officer that answered the phone assured me the same things.

a) It was their officers who were there at the traffic junction
b) My information were taken down for record purposes
c) No summon will be given

He even went as far as giving me the impression that he SAW my information and he knows the officer who copied my name that morning.

The summon, the email and the call from TP

A week after the incident, I received a $20 summon from the TP. Confused, I called AMK NPC again and the officer told me to email the TP and there’s nothing he can do.

So I emailed TP and the service quality team. I got a call from the TP today (Sunday).

According to the TP, it was THEIR officers and not those from AMK NPC that was on duty that day. He gave me the name of the officer who took down my name and described the situation to me. He informed me that as it was a small exercise, AMK NPC was not informed of their activity.

He was sorry about what happened and wanted to help me waive off the summon but my dad (being the law abiding citizen that he is) already paid the summon for me. He was also confused as to why AMK NPC  will actually say that it was their people who were there. He said he will try to find out and I can also wait for AMK NPC’s reply.

Did they lie?

So did they lie? If there is no record that their (AMK NPC) officers are on duty there, why did they tell me they were? If they do not have my record, why did they say they have?

And why did they assure me that I am not going to get a summon when they are not sure?

It’s kind of worrying really. And I am still waiting for AMK NPC to call me back since their service quality team directed my email to them. So hmmm.

The jaywalking law

Not too sure if everyone knows. If you are caught jaywalking, you WILL be fined for $20. Doesn’t matter if you are a first timer or a repeat offender. It’s $20 every time. Unless you dashed across the road or endanger other people, the fine will be $20 rain or shine.

So PEOPLE! The next time you are together with me, please excuse me if I don’t jaywalk with you ok? Once bitten, twice shy!

Looking at my blog stats today, I found this –

a

Obviously the call centre people or whoever it is has been googling. Trying to sniff out more information perhaps?

Hello! I know how you land on my blog, FYI. And yes, now you know how I look like. Unprofessional much?

[Update] Their customer care team finally called me at 8+ tonight. But apparently, I have to wait 2 more days. SERIOUSLY?!

Finding: My $1066.46

It seems like I’ve been having a run of bad luck with customer service. First with Citibank, then MBS and now, StanChart.

Let me try to describe my experience in chronological order.

8th September, 12.06am
I couldn’t find the fund transfer button in the Breeze application. So, I sent an e-Cashier order to Citibank under the Cheque tab. Conveniently forgetting to put my account number.

11th September, 3.03am
After a long day of work, I decided to log on to the Breeze application again to see how the e-Cashier order went. I was surprised to see that the amount has been deducted from my account. I played around with the application somemore and found out that I actually paid my bill the wrong way.

SHIT! I quickly called Citibank to check my account balance and realised that my balance remained unchanged! So I called StanChart and the person told me to wait till the 14th because it takes a few working day for Citibank to tally the e-Cashier order with my account. Especially since I didn’t put in my account number.

I told him that the amount has already been deducted from my account, he said it’s okay. That I should just wait and not call Citibank.

14th September, 11.20pm
After a long day at work, I called Citibank again to check my balance. Nothing has changed.

Called Stanchart and the person on the line told me to wait till the 16th because of the public holiday, Citibank might take longer to process. I repeated the same questions I asked on the 11th and got the same answer. Too tired to think, I thanked the person and hung up.

16th September, 9.53pm
After my Korean class, I called Stanchart again. I repeated my situation again and the boy on the line told me there’s nothing he can do since it’s so long ago and the amount has already been deducted.

I told him that’s not fair especially since all along, I was heeding the advice of his colleagues. His reply was, “FINE! I will put up an official complaint for you. Will that do, mdm?” Of course, I asked to speak to his manager.

His manager, Lalitha, answered the phone and I was made to repeat my situation again. She told me she will set up a request form to help me check out what happened to my money. She promised that she will get her colleague, Adrian, to call me back at 6pm the next day.

I thought, “FINALLY! SOME ACTIONS!”

17th September, 8.06pm
Feeling abit frustrated that I have yet to receive a call, I called the call centre again. The first lady I spoke to promised me that she will get Adrian to call me back as he was engaged. I waited for an hour and NO CALLS!

So I called back again, the second lady told me she will let Adrian know. I told her I expect a call by 9.30pm. She said okay. By 9.30pm, the second lady called me and told me that Adrian is not around. I told her to liase with Adrian and let me know an answer by 10pm. She said okay.

At 9.40pm, I got a call from Adrian. He told me that he will set up a request to his e-transaction team and get back by 20th September, Monday @ 7pm.

At 10.00pm, the second lady called me and said, “Sorry, mdm! Adrian is still busy. I…” at which point I cut in and told her that Adrian has called me already. Apparently, she have yet to liase with him! WAH LAO!

20th September, 8pm
I ended work late. No.Calls.Yet.

So I called the call centre again and asked to speak to Adrian. Waited for like 5 minutes before the person told me that Lalitha is engaged. DID I NOT ASK FOR ADRIAN?! The person said she will get Lalitha to call me back. But I refused to hang up. So after another 5 minutes of waiting, I finally got to speak with Lalitha.

Through my conversation with her, I realised that she has NO IDEA or whatsoever about my conversation with Adrian. She kept telling me, “But mdm, I have already set up a request to our ops team. And it doesn’t seem like Adrian has put up anything. We can only wait.” 

I told her I’ve waited for 12 days! It’s unacceptable behavior. If you told your customers that you are going to call, YOU CALL. Even if there’s no results, call to update your customers  about the status. She tried to tell me some cock-and-bull story about their call centre.

I was rather pissed at this point and I went, “..Don’t tell me your fancy reason. I’ve worked in a call-centre before. When I promised to call my customers, I call them back to update them of their request. If I had to go on leave, I will handover properly to my covering officer and when I come back, I will check the status of the complain with that covering officer so I know what is going on.”

She tried to say that they can’t do that and that they have a lot of complaints, so I went, “..MAKE A LIST THEN! It’s what I do!”

She tried to come up with some more fancy reasons again and I told her to stop it and to escalate my case to their customer care team. She tried to dissuade me from doing that but I insisted and told her that I expect a call from theri customer care team at 10.30am, 21st Sept, Tuesday. I also make Lalitha promised to call me at 11.00am.

21st September, 11.13am
No calls from either side.

Angry, I went down to the branch next door and told the officers there my situation.

The person checked their system and said,”..There’s only one request set up by a Lalitha. But there’s no details attached or anything.”

WHAT?!?!!?! The stories don’t match!

I was angry but I’m too tired to react and it’s not the fault of the guy. The guy took down my contact number and promised to get someone to call me back by today.

A minute ago, Lalitha just called. I’m not very polite. I went, “Woah. You’re an hour late.”

Her excuse? “I’m sorry, mdm. I tried to call at 11am just now. But there was some problem with out system.” REALLY?!
I told her I’ve already been to their main branch and asked her to find out why their customer care team has yet to get back to me. She hung up on me after that. WHAT?!

Afterthought.
I don’t know if I will get a call back by today or not. But if I’ve not receive a call when I end work, I guess I will have to pop by the branch again.

I don’t know. According to my friend, this is not the first time she has heard of such cases. Oh dear.

I really don’t care about anything else. I just want my money back and to pay my Citibank Credit Card bill on time.

I am too tired to be angry. Too tired. Can someone help?!

Bad experience with Marina Bay Sands.

I’m sure if you are on my Twitter, you would have heard about the boo-boo that MBS made. Basically, we called to make a reservation and the person on the other line, took down our credit card number, expiry date and cvv number.

When we called back the next day, MBS was not able to find out credit card details! But assured us that we have a room and asked for our credit card details again. So, we gave it to them. Fine.

But the next day, we received an email from them confirming our reservation WITH the personal AND credit card details of another customer. Shocked and worried for our own CC details, we called MBS to inform them of this matter, the manager took approx 1.5days to “investigate” the situation. When she finally got back to us, not much was said, just the mandatory – “We are sorry such things happened. Blah blah blah. We assure you that no such things will happen again. Blah blah blah.”

I won’t talk much about the lost of credit card details and all because I assume that the staff was poorly trained or there is a lack of system in place to handle phone reservations.

But I do have my opinions about their service recovery.

Identify theft, credit card theft is common these days. Therefore, I believe that the details of a customer should be handled very carefully.

The information mis-leak from MBS was pretty bad. If it should land in people who are greedy, they can take those details and sell it or even use it to buy stuff.

Human are prone to errors. I, for one, sent out an invitation to a speaker with the WRONG date. Therefore, I believe that once you discovered that you’ve made a mistake, you should a)find out the cause and b)explain to the parties involved.

Nope. Didn’t happened. When we informed MBS about the information mis-leak, all they did was to tell us that they will look into it and get back to us. Okay. We understand that the person might need to look into the matter so as to give us an explanation. We waited for close to 2 days and at the end of it, we got a call and email that looked like it was from a template and could have been easily sent out on the day we called.

Look, the longer you make your customers wait, the more detailed they will expect your explanation to be.

They didn’t explain what happened and what steps they will take to prevent such things from happening again. They made it sound like what happened is an everyday thing. And most importantly, they didn’t tell us what they are doing to ensure that our details were not leaked. Or if the missing credit card details we gave them has been recovered. Are the credit card details now in the land of lost credit card details? WHAT?!

Anyway, we decided not to pursue the matter anymore. But I thought I should share this with everyone. Be careful!

Will let you know about my stay there when it is over.

[Additional news] My friend was in the casino that day and she heard a manager saying this to a pair of customers who were squabbling about their bets, “You all should know what you all bet on. I am very busy. I don’t have time to go through the CCTV to verify the bets you’ve made.” LIKE WHAT?!

Resident Evil: Afterlife

After a failed attempt to catch the show on Thursday night, the sister and I decided to catch it today @ AMK Hub in 3D (:

Recap: Part 3 ended with Alice finding clones of herself (about 40, I think) at the research facility of Umbrella Corp. She discovered that the mastermind behind the T-virus have a HQ in Japan and she was ready for revenge.

Storyline:

Resident Evil:Afterlife started with a scene in Tokyo (I assume) with a girl standing in the rain at a cross road. People streamed pass her and suddenly, she lunged at a passerby and that’s how the whole infection started (No surprise). Several Alice appeared to attack the Umbrella Corp’s HQ and even though the succeed, the mastermind behind escaped and all the Alices died in an explosion. The real Alice (Milla Jovovich) is on the plane of the mastermind (no surprise again) and even though she managed to crash the plane, she is now HUMAN !

Alice somehow managed to survive the plane crash and she went in search of the others in Arcadia. Arcadia turned out to be a hoax (no surprise again!) and together with Claire (Ali Larter) they flew to LA where they found a group of survivors. From there, they battled the zombies, fight and searched for Arcadia (the other one).

Thoughts:

No surprise in this movie. Pretty expected (you can know who is going to die/survive) and the zombies are still DEHYDRATED. I much prefer the juicier version in Part 1 and 2. There’s too many slow motion scenes too! I was like, “Can we hurry up please!” And the storyline is more focused on Alice getting revenge than the zombie-slaying! Darn! But I guess it’s a road the writers have to take. If it’s always about slaying zombies, it will get boring.

Quite surprised that Alice is finally human! But then, she is still as agile and strong o.O Ohwell!

Wentworth Miller is also in the show. He is Claire’s brother, Chris. Eye-candy for the girls, I think. Not for me though. Chris is also an integral part of the whole Resident Evil if my memory is correct. But I can’t remember where he fits in though.

Ohyah! I burst out laughing when Wentworth Miller came out though. We all know him from Prison Break, yes? And guess where he was in Resident Evil? Locked in a cell in prison! Best part is…He told the survivors that he knows the way out*smacks forehead* If I’m them, I wouldn’t trust him. Look! He took so many seasons to try and escape and he is still there!!! Okok, I lame. MOVING ON!

But overall, I still think it’s a pretty decent movie. The girls look sexy without revealing boobs. Well, okay. There’s one booby girl but she died rather early (thank god!).

There’s this scene where Wentworth Miller brought Alice to a room full of armory and she went, “Niccceeeeee *smirks*” Somehow, I like that scene quite a bit! Oh! And that scene where Claire and Chris shot at the corky mastermind together! Cooool!

Question! Why is it that when the zombies dies, there’s coins dropping out?

Is it worth to watch it in 3D? I would recommend it! The raindrops, the bullets (a little Matrix-ish though) and the slow-motion!

Other thoughts:

Cathay @ AMK Hub needs to clean their 3D classes and also iron out their screen. It’s so crumpled at the bottom that I noticed it! BOO!

And the girl sitting beside me frightens me! A zombie will come out and she will jump + wave her arms which will then scare me and make me jump o.O

In a nutshell:

It pales in comparison to the other parts but all’s good. It matches expectations.

Then again, being the Resident Evil fan (kinda) that I am, I will still watch it even if it suck! (:

3 out of 5 popcorns!

plans for the long weekend!

Okay, call me no life or what you want. But here’s my plan for the long weekend.

Friday – Catchup on sleep Movie + Work (till 3am)
Saturday – Catchup on movies and dramas  Playing the middleman + Run
Sunday – Read read read  Catching up on sleep + sick

I am craving for me-time. I need loads and loads of them.

Too many people, too many noise. I can’t hear myself.

[Edit] I just want to cozy up with a book and have no disruption! No one disturbing about taking meals or what not. Just me, myself and my book 😦