What you need to know:
- Charged for late payment fee despite having 100 per cent auto payment.
I had applied for Najm Visa credit card, and made sure with a Majid Al Futtaim Finance representative that I needed the 100 per cent auto payment to be activated for my monthly balance, which he promised to do.
After receiving the card, I called the call centre to double check if the auto-payment activation had been done. They said no. I asked them to apply on the spot. They sent me a template, which I filled.
After a week, Najm representative told me that Emirates NBD rejected my auto-payment request. I checked back with Emirates NBD and they told me the form has a lot of corrections and these were not countersigned by me and hence they rejected it.
I asked Najm to send me another template. I filled this and applied again for the auto payment. Finally, I got a confirmation email from Najm saying the auto payment has been activated.
On the due date for my card payment, I kept receiving many messages from Najm saying you exceeded your payment due date.
I called Najm saying they should do the auto deduction automatically for the whole balance. The agent said it might need a few days from the payment department to do the transaction and that I should ignore those messages as long as I have enough balance in my Emirates NBD account. I asked what if you applied any late charges or interests? He said the delay is caused by us so definitely, we will reverse this amount to you.
While using my card on January 2, the transaction got rejected. I contacted the call centre and they simply said we blocked it. Instead of apologising for this inconvenience caused by Najm’s weak system and unqualified representatives, the complaint team asked me to pay the late charge, interest and annual fees. Why am I being penalised for no fault of mine?
From Mr Ahmad Hamdy
Dubai
The management of Majid Al Futtaim Finance responds: While we understand Mr Hamdy’s frustration that the first direct debit request was unsuccessful, the rejection was from his bank and he was notified by both Najm and the bank of this fact. During the time between the unsuccessful request form and the second form submission, a payment was due on his account, which was not paid, and which led to the temporary block on his card. As a new customer, with no payment history with Najm, this is a standard security action when a first payment is not made. Unfortunately, our call centre agents will only know if the direct debit function is activated once it is approved by the bank, which is why they would not have been able to give him further information regarding the request. The second form was approved on December 25, which means the payment for the next statement would be debited directly. However, it does not mean previous balances would automatically be withdrawn. Mr Hamdy was notified in advance of the rejected status of his direct debit request, which would require him to make the payment for his first statement himself. His request for a late fee reversal was granted on his first payment statement as a courtesy by Najm. We regret that due to logistical details between financial services, sometimes requests and approvals get held up and rejected but we do our best to communicate any changes or updates with our customers.
(Process initiation: February 14. Response from organisation: February 19)
Editor’s note: Do you have similar issues that you would like to raise with us? You can write to us at readers@gulfnews.com.
