I have been facing a severe case of negligence by Emirates NBD. We landed in Madrid, Spain on March 25, 2016 and we were immediately robbed of our bag containing our mobiles, cash and credit cards. We immediately called MasterCard to block the card and they provided us with emergency cash of 2000 euros (Dh8,256). We were assured that the funds would reach us within 48 hours. After five days we received a call from MasterCard to advise us that the request had been rejected by the bank. The days that followed were extremely difficult and torturous to stay without funds in a foreign country with no money to pay for food and other basic human requirements. So basically the amount of Dh22,000 that I spent on my Trafalgar tour package excluding airfare went down the drain due to the negligence of the bank for no fault of ours.
On our return to Dubai I started to communicate with the customer service team for over a month with no proper response. I was then compelled to directly contact the senior manager and after much persuasion a meeting was arranged and concluded with an offer of food vouchers, which I declined. The offer was later upgraded to eventually reach 40,000 skyward miles and two nights stay in a Northern Emirates hotel, which I again declined as being unfair. Another meeting was conducted in June 2016 whereby they tried to convince me that MasterCard was at fault for refusing this request, but when I explained to them that MasterCard has already shared the information with me that the request was directly rejected by the call centre agent rather than escalating it to his seniors as per banking policy and procedure. Then they relented and accepted that the mistake was solely due to bank negligence and they were sorry for it.
Their apology does not suffice my loss and inconvenience during those 21 days of travel, and I expected better customer service from an esteemed bank. Their refusal to provide the emergency cash to us is against the benefits as promised to us at the time of enrolling us as MasterCard holders and it was a breach of contract. They have now completely stopped responding to any call or email.
I hope you can resolve this long standing issue, and I look forward to their response to us via Gulf News.
Ms Zeeba Samad
Dubai
The management of Emirates NBD responds:
We are pleased to inform you that our Group Customer Experience team contacted the customer and the matter has been resolved to her satisfaction.
We would like to thank you for your continuous support in providing us with the opportunity to resolve their issues.
Ms Samad responds:
Yes, we finally managed to have a meeting with them after a period of seven months, thanks to Gulf News’ intervention. The issue has been resolved based on a verbal assurance from Emirates NBD to reimburse us with travel points. Had it not been for the intervention, we would still be ignored.
(Process initiation: August 28. Response from organisation: August 29. Process completion: October 2).
