UOB Buana Nightmare continues

After I posted the previous blog entries, I immediately received a few missed call. I was too upset to talk to anyone, not after that 45 minutes on call with an agent that put me on hold as long as 15 minutes!.

UOB Buana representative managed to reach me the following day to apologize for the inconvenience and so on, but could not comment why none of the agent never returned my call.  She also explained that a missing refund was indeed credited but in a different month and a different card account.  While I am no longer in the interest to verify the past bills, I still would hold UOB Buana for this unnecessary argument.  If they have indeed credited the full refund, the five or six officers that I spoke too in the past would have been able to advise me and suggested me to check again the missing refund.  All they did is just ‘We receive your report and will be investigating it’.

I couldn’t help to think that these officers are either not empowered to do anything that receiving a call or simply not motivated in serving customers which is their job.  How could a bank can get away with such poor customer service? How could a customer rely on the bank during emergency situation (e.g. transaction declined at point of sales where payment must be done immediately for urgent issues or reporting a loss card).  The difficulties in getting an agent will definitely put all UOB Buana credit card hold a greater risk when reporting stolen/loss card.  

Imagine if I loss my card, I still would be liable for any unauthorized transactions until I reported the card loss to the officer and the officer of the bank terminates that card. If I couldn’t get to the officer promptly or the processes is such that include a long verification questions (> 6 questions) and passed on to another officer with another holding time, the thieves may just done a lot of transactions in such a small time windows.

I made up my mind – I’ll be cancelling my account once all pending issues are resolved and perhaps review in the next 2-3 years once their processes become mature.

I got a call from Ms. Fanny while I was in town, but I didn’t speak to her well as I was in another bank.  Till date, the vouchers never arrived on my home, which already takes 6 weeks to process.  

Let’s revisit this:

1. Very difficult in getting to customer service officer.
2. More than often, officers are not really helpful as they only create reports and no follow-up.
3. Processing times just get ridiculous for any requests.
4. Flaws in both Credit Card centre PABX system and their Card Centre office which may result in looping menu (callers thrown back to main menu when holding to speak to an officer).

 

To be fair, I am haven’t got any significant issues with BCA credit card although I don’t use them as much, and it was not a Platinum card.  I haven’t really try any other banks in Indonesia, so could it be that just the baseline or it was just UOB that need to catch-up?  Leave a comment if you have any experiences with any banks.

UOB Buana Credit Card Nightmare

 

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).

M1: You deserve better – Really?

MobileOne (M1) has launched a campaign recently with its eye-catching TV ads.  This article discuss if it really sincere from a customer point of view.

[ youtube=http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=hayhKXu99iw]

As in my previous blog post, I have been with M1, as long as I can remember in 2001. I have switched to SingTel and Starhub, but had to switch back to M1 for one of the line. The line belongs to the company, thus it was not my decision to make.  I recall that I liked M1 during those days, they are challenging SingTel domination in the market and came with attractive services.  It didn’t last long, when Starhub merged with SCV, M1 seems destined to be the last of the three with lack of ‘bundling’ power.

The pitch from the ad ‘Some companies just don’t listen but we do….’

While I have not fully understood if the ad was directed to any or both of the other operators, M1 has also failed me in listening to the customer.  My reception has been very poor at my residential area for over two years. The engineer has visitted my building at least twice to take signal strength and quality, but no action is done.

When I enabled the cell-in on the phone, I see that my phone kept on switching base station even to one that is very far away.  Frequent disconnection, non-3G data connection seems to stay in my area until M1 has decided to really listen to their customer plight. 2 years is a lot of time to do planning and rectify the issue.

Oh well… hope we get something positive out of this PR campaign or the other two operators can responds with mock ads (recall Starhub fat green pipe VS Singtel’s dedicated pipe).
Here is the link to Survey from M1: You Deserve Better

Update (22/05): Straits Times published an article ‘Telcos go all out to snag ’switchers’ .  I still fail to see how this would better position M1 against the others. I’m happy with Starhub now and I used to be happy when I used SingTel before I had to switch to M1. If M1 wants to retain its customer, it needs to differentiate itself from the others. Surprisingly, starhub is the first one to come with HSUPA networks (up to 7.2 Mbit downstream and 2 Mbit upstream).  I would expect that M1 be the frontrunner in wireless broadband, because it doesn’t have anything else to distinguish itself from the others.

I await my days when I’m free from M1 services.

Practical Downgrade / Install Windows XP guide to Thinkpad notebooks

Most of the laptops/notebooks come with Windows Vista flavors these days and it is not what all consumers like. Some prefers to stay in Windows XP due to less demanding resources and quicker response.  I’ll touch a bit on why selecting XP over Vista and vice versa followed by how to do it (excerpt)

Windows XP or Vista?

Well, we should really moving to Vista by now ideally speaking. It is the current technology and a better product in some ways.  Windows XP was created in 2000 which mean it was 8 years ago!!! For an IT software, 8 years is a feat which is hard to beat.

Here is why you want to consider XP over vista:

• You require the maximum of what your hardware (Storage, Memory, CPU, etc) can deliver
• You are not ready to spend weeks or months to learn a new operating system
• Your machine that may not be able to deliver the same performance in Vista compared to XP
• Simplicity and familiarity are your primary criteria in evaluating this.

Bear in mind, there are some catches staying with Windows XP:

• Microsoft, in all its best economic interest, would not develop XP much further. It rather sell Vista or create a more compelling substitute of Vista.
• Service Pack 3 may be the last SP there is.
• In a couple of years, the support for it will end. There has been a strong demand for Microsoft to extend this, but I am not aware on the last update.
• Architecturally, it is less secure than Vista, thus improperly configured XP has higher vulnerability.

You may want to consider Vista over XP for:

• You want to keep up to date with current Windows OS life cycle
• You like the new User Interface and it’s cool effects
• You feel assured with increased security in Vista
• You don’t mind trading storage, performance for all benefit that Vista can offer
• You have new machines that are certified/designed to work with Vista.

Having said that, some people have opted to have a dual boot. I personally dropped the idea. It is simply too much work and often a failed attempt to make both OS working with the software that I’m running.  Even if I want to have access to two OS, I’d use two separate hard disk.

Now supposed that your notebook (In this case, I’ll pick Lenovo Thinkpad as an example) comes with Vista and you’d switch over to XP, there are options to do this. You can either purchase a XP recovery CD for the notebook (Only Vista Business and may be Ultimate have this option).  Once you get hold of the CDs, just boot-up using the first CD and follow the prompt. You’ll be running XP in no time with all drivers installed.  The most that you need is to install System Update and update all drivers to curent version.

If Recovery CD is not an option i.e. you are using Vista Home (Basic/Premium), then you’d need to do some work. The option is either to purchase a XP license or use your existing one. Using illegitimate means are not recommended as Microsoft can detect this and surpress any future updates that you need.

A very good article is written here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=188992 While it’s a good article, I can’t seems to follow every steps. So this post is meant to complement parts that I felt missing.

1. When downloading drivers for Wireless and Ethernet devices, it can be confusing as they are at least two options each. For X61, choose Intel Wireless and Intel Ethernet.  If memory serves me good, A centrino laptop should use Intel Wireless networking.
2. Slight deviation from the order did not make any adverse effect on my attempt.
3. The defrag from command-line didn’t work for me, so I use a normal GUI one
4. Ultranav utility and some others that are mentioned can be installed easily with SystemUpdate. Make sure you have downloaded and installed .NET runtime and then install the System update. It’ll detect any mising/obselete drivers (in most cases) and update them for you automatically.

Thinkpad advantage

I used to be on the Acer camp, as they are the first ones to come up with latest Intel CPUs and chipsets. The price are reasonably affordable.  After a few years, I stayed away from it. This is mainly due to its short product lifecyle.  Imagine you purchase a laptop today, and Acer only updates their drivers no more than 1 year.  So if price/performance is important, it can be your choice.

Lenovo (used to be IBM’s) Thinkpad were outside of the radar due to its price tag and relatively lower specification from the competitor. I came to reliase the best of ThinkPad later on.  Thinkpad are strong (you can drop it and it still survives), it has a longer lifecycle (>3 years in some produts I have), and the SystemUpdate is a major plus. Again, SystemUpdate is a piece of software that automatically detect your machine configuration and offers you to download and install everything at one go.  This is a time saver. Really.

The conservative design in ThinkPad seems to increase durability and quality of the product. The gripes that I have with the series is that the high-pitch noise when the machine is under standby and relatively hot when in use. 

I got my X61 recently, the first portable machine I have without sacrificing much of the computing power that I need. It’s about time the form factor and computing power to co-exist together…

 

Practical Advice

1. Consider carefully which Operating system you want to use. Opting for both when you don’t have a very good reason is a resource waste.
2. Known your technical capabilities in setting up the system you want. For those who are not familiar with reimaging or configuring a new OS would be better off with pre-loaded system
3. Always create Recovery CDs as soon as you get the laptop. They can be used later when you need to restore the laptop in working condition.
4. Consider building a clean XP instead of a bloated recovery CD. You’ll not get all those Shareware (Norton) and other unncessary software. You’d need to spend time to build the system though.
5. Create image of you system in stages, so that you can restore to each stages easily.