Back in October 2005 I sent a hunk of money home using Saudi Hollandi Bank’s online banking service. It had worked flawlessly before on a number of occasions. Sure enough, the money disappeared instantly from my account and the transaction was confirmed. So much easier than queuing for hours in Speed Cash in downtown Al Khobar.
Money usually appears in my UK account within 48 hours, but a week later nothing was showing. I then rang SHB to enquire what they had done with my money. That was the first of many, many calls. The pattern usually went something like this. 1) Ring the online banking service; 2) spend several minutes inputting card code, pin number; listening to menu options and dialing the numbers as told in Arabic and English; 3) getting to the end of the messages and being cut off; 4) trying again. Eventually I found that the menu option I wanted didn’t exist, but if you said (via key taps) that you wanted to transfer an amount of money and then entered 0 as the value, you would be transfered to a real person and could then begin stage 5. At stage 5 the clerk would greet me “Hello Mr Nicholas, how can I help you?”. I would then quote my query number. 6) Wait for the clerk to go off and find the records; 7) explain what the problem was, again, all records seemingly having not been recorded in an accessible manner; 8) wait; 9) talk, once again to the clerk, this time to be told either “Please ring back tomorrow, I am going to investigate this” or “I will call you tomorrow”. 10) The next call would produce no further results of course, and I invariably waited in vain for SHB to call me.
Eventually I enlisted the help of the bank manager in Al-Khobar, the company bank managers in Al-Khobar and Riyadh, our finance director and our accountant. All to no avail. Ten days ago, with a large wad of documents I went to see our Head of Government Relations, Mr R. He wrote a couple of letters for me, which I signed. That though, was only the start of the process, for he obviously did a great deal of behind the scenes negotiating. My money is now in my account in the UK!
Money usually appears in my UK account within 48 hours, but a week later nothing was showing. I then rang SHB to enquire what they had done with my money. That was the first of many, many calls. The pattern usually went something like this. 1) Ring the online banking service; 2) spend several minutes inputting card code, pin number; listening to menu options and dialing the numbers as told in Arabic and English; 3) getting to the end of the messages and being cut off; 4) trying again. Eventually I found that the menu option I wanted didn’t exist, but if you said (via key taps) that you wanted to transfer an amount of money and then entered 0 as the value, you would be transfered to a real person and could then begin stage 5. At stage 5 the clerk would greet me “Hello Mr Nicholas, how can I help you?”. I would then quote my query number. 6) Wait for the clerk to go off and find the records; 7) explain what the problem was, again, all records seemingly having not been recorded in an accessible manner; 8) wait; 9) talk, once again to the clerk, this time to be told either “Please ring back tomorrow, I am going to investigate this” or “I will call you tomorrow”. 10) The next call would produce no further results of course, and I invariably waited in vain for SHB to call me.
Eventually I enlisted the help of the bank manager in Al-Khobar, the company bank managers in Al-Khobar and Riyadh, our finance director and our accountant. All to no avail. Ten days ago, with a large wad of documents I went to see our Head of Government Relations, Mr R. He wrote a couple of letters for me, which I signed. That though, was only the start of the process, for he obviously did a great deal of behind the scenes negotiating. My money is now in my account in the UK!
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