UOB Buana Credit Card Nightmare.
If you’re a current holder of UOB Buana Credit card or considering to get one, you may want to read this article.
I have been a UOB (Singapore) customer since early 2000 and have a very good impression and experience with it. In fact, it is my favorite and primary bank among all others. A couple years back, Bank Buana in Indonesia has been acquired by UOB and I decided to take their Visa Platinum credit card.
From the very first, I had terrible experience. It has my name misprinted on the cards. When informed about this error, the officer suggested either I use the card with incorrect name printed, or reapply going through all the trouble. This is the first sign of a very un-organized credit card company.
During the course of the usage, there was a lot of teething problem including bills not sent at all or missing enroute. The amusing response that I got from UOB is that it is all within their Service Level Agreement that bills comes latest 3-5 days before it was due. They also always say there are not in charge or in control of their courier service, a convenient excuse.
It is quite interesting to note that the SLA allows only less than 1 week for customer to see, check and pay their bills. This is way different than over 20 days period in Singapore from all major credit card. They are also not responsible when the bill didn’t come to us and obviously finance charges apply when we overlooked to pay due to bill not received. There is also no internet banking access for credit card customer.
Recently, the bill has been arriving well, a sign that they did have problem in mailing system but never admitted to have one. The worst is yet to come. I was charged annual fee for all my card. Usually this can be waived upon request, but UOB Buana seems do not need to retain customer and refused to waive it at all. It also rejected my request to close down my account as I have outstanding annual fee. In Singapore, we can just cancel our account if we do not wish to continue with another year even we had been charged for annual fee.
After going a long route through UOB Singapore, I got a call back from Ms. Fanny from UOB Buana Indonesia. She promised that she will waive off my annual fee if I stay for another year. I did give them a chance for another year. Is this the end? Not really. It turns out one month later, It has refunded two of three my annual fee. I made a number of call each spaced in one month interval, as they need to investigate.
They never called me again, nor replied with what is the cause of missing refund on the annual fee. Today, it was explained to me that the approved refund for indeed for two out of three cards. Well, Why no one has told me before on that? And why did Ms. Fanny promised to waived full amount?
I also tried to redeem all remaining points that I have, it takes 4-6 weeks. It has been 5 weeks but no vouchers arrived in my home. I guess, UOB Buana process just as screwed up as 4th world company. What kind of work needed to get a voucher issued within 4-6 weeks.
Another incident is that, I can’t close my account due to error in card charges. One of my subcard holder swiped UOB Buana card instead of UOB Singapore for a Singapore transaction. When he realised that the wrong card was used, he immediately asked the store to void the transaction and pay with UOB Singapore card. This is all done in less than 30 minutes. Guess what, we have pay the difference about 80 SGD for a cancelled transaction within 30 minutes.
Lesson learnt: UOB Buana Credit card simply doesn’t have what it takes to run a credit card business in professional manner. I would even think that I have been cheated, wasted a lot of time for this 4th world service.
Never get a UOB Buana credit card (even Platinum) unless you agree and willing to experience the problem above. I just stick with my UOB Visa Infinite for all my transaction, knowing that only 2% maximum exchange rate (not like 5% or more with local UOB Buana card).
