Settlement matter
I applied for Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB) Al Khair Liability Settlement in December 2013 (loan amount was Dh257,000, loan tenure was 42 months). While signing my loan application, I requested the sales person for copies of the loan papers or contract. But he replied that as per their bank policy, he is not allowed to give me any papers. This sounded very strange to me, as I knew banks should give documents as proof, to me too.
Therefore, after 2-3 days, I contacted the bank’s customer service on 8002288. I asked the customer service executive why the bank had a strange policy of not giving the loan contract to the customer, and also requested for a loan amortisation chart. The customer service executive replied that actually, the sales person should have given me at least one paper in which the loan instalment, profit rate, loan tenure and total loan amount were mentioned. Regarding the loan amortisation chart, he replied that they did not have anything like that (the bank will have call records of my conversation in mid-December). I contacted the sales person again and told him to give me the document as per the customer service agent’s information. The sales person gave me a single page document but in it, there was no mention of early settlement details.
Points to be noted:
• The sales person lied to me. He did this because he wants to meet his loan sales targets.
• I contacted the customer service team to verify this. They too, did not give me a complete answer, because if I knew about the settlement issue, I would have cancelled my loan application.
Now, when I am stuck with financial issues and want to top up my loan to have some cash in hand, I contacted ADIB for a top up, and they told me their profit rate for top up is 7.99 per cent, which is too high, compared to other banks’ rates.
So, I enquired with another bank to shift from ADIB. The new bank is offering me a good profit rate of 4.99 per cent. Then, I requested ADIB for a liability settlement letter. After following up for one month, they replied to me that I have to pay ADIB the full profit rate (of whole loan tenure ie. 42 months), whether I pre-close it now (eight months) or at any time within a total tenure of 42 months.
They told me that this was mentioned in the loan contract. I told them that they have cheated me and have not given me copies of the loan contract. I also told them they can check their call records to verify that. I even contacted the customer service team to confirm this, but they too fooled me. They told me I should get at least one paper in which the loan instalment, profit rate, loan tenure and total loan amount is mentioned.
I strongly believe that nothing can be done when all the staff members are not giving complete or correct information. If they had given me the right information, I would had definitely cancelled my loan application.
From Mr Arshad Ali Shaikh
Abu Dhabi
The management of Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank responds:
The issue has already been resolved, as the customer received the clearance letter with the settlement amount.
(Process initiation: January 5. Response from organisation: February 3. Process completion: February 4.)
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