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MasterCard SA This company seems bent on losing money! Despite my best efforts (at my own cost!!) they do not seem to take any action. They launched a new package deal credit card which I subscribed to last year in 1998. Well since then, every time I get a monthly statement consisting of two pages or more EACH page arrives in its own envelope! Wasted envelopes, wasted postage, etc. Well I tried two e-mails last year and was assured by one employee that it would come right. Two months later it happened again - still no action taken. Well I took it on myself to personally contact their financial manager as I was certain this person would take wasted costs to heart. I was not disappointed and action was promised. Well, for two months after that guess what? Still no change. To me as the layman it seemed that there was a programming glitch with the new "package" and somehow it was posting each page in a separate envelope. It was NOT the computer's fault as I was told, it was the PROGRAMMERS or analysts fault. It should not have taken five months or longer to fix. It is my money that was being wasted. I still wonder if anyone was held accountable for making the error in the first place, or secondly if the first employee who promised action and never took it was ever followed up on (yes, I kept her name and passed it on to the financial manager). The point of this issue is that money is wasted. At the end of the day the client covers this cost. The client points the error out, but bureaucracy takes its time to correct the fault. Of course no-one ever calls you back to thank you for bringing it to their attention. An interesting footnote here is that my credit card was recently swallowed by an ATM machine through no fault of mine. I had to call them from my cellphone to block the card, the call costing R18 ($3). The problem was the company lost my last card (by sending it to the wrong address) and they then cancelled the card. It is interesting to note that the bank charges you for every mistake you make like a dud cheque, overdrawing your account, etc but when they make a mistake you must also foot the bill!! A last footnote before I closed this account and left the bank all together for their major competitor attempting a hostile takeover. In 1999 I visited the cinema with my wife and afterwards went to a coffee shop for coffee and cake. A few days later I checked my provisional statement and noticed that there was a double deduction for the coffee shop. I called the manager and he promptly reversed one of the transactions (very good so far!). The following day I drew another provisional statement and lo and behold there was only one deduction and one cancellation (I still have the printouts). I used the e-mail address printed on my Mastercard statements to inform them of the error and asked what had happened. Well no reply despite a few reminders. I eventually called long distance to sort it out over the phone. The assistant on the other side knew nothing about the e-mail address at all. I insisted she go find out where it went. Well about 5 minutes later she returned (and quite a bit of my money again expended trying to sort the mess out) and told me the e-mail was going to the research department!!! Well this is what finally did it for me and I told her to just leave it and I would refund the coffee shop and close my accounts with them. She thanked me and wished me a good day........ END OF MY CUSTOM AFTER NEARLY 18 YEARS None of these opinions in any way reflect those of my employer. These pages are entirely private. |