Hassan, a father of three who is a Point of Service (POS) vendor in Sagamu Ogun State we gathered had been rebuffed by the United Bank for Africa (UBA) in his attempt to recover N302,000 (Three hundred and two thousand naira) illegally deducted from his account over a period of time.
While demanding explanations for the disappearance of the said amount and series of unsolicited debits on his account. from his account, this customer we learnt was not properly attended to even when he visited the Marina head office of UBA.>>>Continue Reading…
The Sagamu man said that he suffered the loss on the night of February 6.
“By the time I got to know of the debits, N302,500 had been removed from my account,” Hassan explained.
Following this shocking event, he headed to the Sagamu branch of the bank to lodge complaints, where he was delayed for many hours without a solution.
“All I was told was that they would send my complaints to their regional headquarters in Marina, Lagos,” he said.
Hassan was promised seven working days to rectify the issue. However, two weeks after the promised date, nothing was done. “I waited for over two weeks, nothing happened,” he said.
Hassan said he had been running his business on an overdraft and had got reminders to pay back.
He went to the bank’s head office in Marina to personally see to the progress of his complaint.
“I went through serious stress at the head office, hours of waiting in the sun, sitting as if we were there to beg for money.” He lamented.
He said that three days later, the bank came with a response that the 39 debits on his account were done through the use of a debit card.
“My wife and I run a PoS business, so we understand the workings of a debit card. We had no cause to use an ATM card at all anywhere. Also, the instructions on the debits read ‘web purchase’. If it had been truly that, then there must have been a request for OTP, but there was none; we got no OTP” Hassan maintained.
Understanding that the excuses given by the bank were not adding up, Hassan concluded that the fraudulent transactions were in-house.
“The money was deducted internally, and there was a connivance amongst the staff,” Hassan alleged.
The array of debits on Hassan’s account.
Investigation revealed that in the recent past, members of the UBA staff were charged to court and convicted for stealing customers’ monies. On June 5, the EFCC arraigned two staff members of the bank for a similar offence.
“All my efforts to get UBA to refund my money have been met with one excuse or the other. I pleaded, but at some point, they even told me to go and do my worst,” the father of three said.
On Friday 10, three days after Hassan received the debits, he received the first repayment reminder of the overdraft he had secured from no other bank than the UBA.
While refusing to resolve the unsolicited deduction, UBA has never lost a day to remind Hassan of the consequences of defaulting in the settlement of the bank’s overdraft.>>>Continue Reading…
An email to Ramon Nasir, UBA’s Group Head, Media and External Relations by FIJ on Wednesday, he sought time to investigate the matter. However, as of press time, he had not reverted.