Hassle Free Life – Experience with Bank Alfalah

I was talking about Bank Alfalah in my previous post. I have decided to disclose the names of organizations I have experience with instead of being all too mysterious. It probably won’t make any different to them, but it will certainly make a reader cautious when dealing with those organizations.

I have a Bank Alfalah credit card and I wanted to perform a transaction over the internet. The transaction was rejected by the bank. When I called the bank I found out that all internet transactions are supposed to be authorized in advance by the credit card owner. How stupid! Anyway, when I told them I am about to perform this transaction they said they will fax me a request form which I have to fill up and fax it back to them. Great. So if I am online in the middle of the night and want to purchase something through internet, I have to call Bank Alfalah, do the fax thing and then do the transaction. And if I don’t have fax machine at home I am out of luck.

I receive the fax at my office, complete the form, and fax it back from the public phone shop outside my office (didn’t feel like using office fax machine to send outgoing faxes). Cost me 30 rupees.

I tried the transaction again and it was rejected! What?? I did send you the FAX!! But I didn’t call them to check if the fax was received or not. You gotta be kidding me! Apparently they never received the fax. So now I have to fax the form again. But guess what? I didn’t retain the form after faxing it. Not a problem. They send me the form at my office fax number. I fill it up again and spend another 30 bucks to fax it back to them.

This time I called them immediately, and they received the fax (woohooo!!), but it was being processed and I was adviced to call back in 30 minutes to confirm it was really processed. Wow! I couldn’t believe it. Even after they received the fax I can’t be sure that my credit card is enabled for internet.

Nevetheless, I call after 30 minutes. This time the agent keeps me on hold for good 5 minutes, comes back and asks me when did I send the fax. When I told him it’s been half an hour, he says I should have called immediately to check if the fax was received and they cannot find my fax. That was it for me. I gave them a piece of my mind and did some yelling and bullshitting. I was put on hold.

Soon he came back and gave me the good news that my fax was received and processed and my credit card has been enabled for internet for the duration I requested, and that I will be responsible for all the transactions made on the internet during that time.

Wasn’t all this technology, plastic money, online transactions, meant to make life easy for us?