Many years ago, I had applied for an auto loan and in connection with that, also opened a current account with Mashreq Bank. I repaid the loan amount, however the account was not closed. I did not make any other transaction through this account apart from transactions due to the purpose of my loan.

The bank usually sends a quarterly statement and suddenly, I noticed they charged me Dh25 per month on this dormant account from 2012 onwards. It accumulated into a huge amount. When I approached the bank, they said this amount had to be paid to close the account. The bank was silent all these years and they did not even send me any communication related to this dormant account closure or any information about penalty charges. Could Gulf News please intervene and close this matter so that I don’t have to pay any charges?

From Mr Babu Muthiah Karthiyaini

Dubai

The management of Mashreq responds:

Thank you for sharing Mr Karthiyaini’s concern with us. We have reviewed the concerns raised by Mr Karthiyaini regarding the charges accumulated on his current account.

Our investigation reveals that Mr Karthiyaini has an account with us since June 6, 2012, and was not maintaining the minimum balance in his account due to which, the charges were levied on the account as per the schedule of charges. The charges went on hold as he did not have sufficient funds in his account.

We have recently amended our statements’ format and started showing these accumulated charges in the monthly statement. We have dropped the charges on hold as a goodwill gesture as Mr Karthiyaini wishes to close his account.

We have contacted Mr Karthiyaini and informed that he would need to visit the nearest Mashreq branch for the closure of account and he is satisfied with the prompt response.

We take this opportunity to thank Gulf News once again for bringing a customer issue to our notice.

Mr Karthiyaini responds:

Thank you very much for the effort and help. Much appreciated. I received the confirmation from the bank, saying that the account was closed without any penalty charges.

(Process initiation: January 29. Response from organisation: January 31. Reader confirmation: February 4.)

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.