A netizen has criticised DBS for extending poor service to her after she accidentally transferred money to the wrong account via the bank’s PayLah feature.
Desiree Anne de Souza wrote on DBS’ Facebook wall: “In February I made a mistake by sending a Paynow transfer to the wrong number. (The intended recipient was next to me and even confirmed the number when I read it out to them!)
“I immediately contacted DBS and they coolly told me not to worry and to drop in to a branch to lodge a report, which I promptly did the very next day.”
Ms de Souza managed to contact the person who she had accidentally sent the funds to and the person promised to transfer the amount back to her but nothing came of it.
A few weeks later, DBS apparently sent Ms de Souza a letter stating that they “will not be able to pursue this matter further.”
Ms de Souza wrote: “In a nutshell, too bad, not our problem, make a police report. No ownership over their product…Really DBS?!?! This is your accountability to your clients? I’m sure I’m not alone on this.”
The netizen contacted the person she had transferred the funds to again and the recipient finally sent the funds back to Ms de Souza after she said that she intends to make a police report and take the matter to the small claims court.
Ms de Souza said that the recipient, however, “said that DBS never contacted them either by phone or mail, otherwise they would have returned the money earlier as they forgot about it.” She asked: “Who do I believe?!”
DBS responded to Ms de Souza’s post and clarified that “as a general rule, we are unable to debit any account on the basis of another account holder’s claims; hence, an authorisation from the other account holder is needed.
“This also applies to all DBS/POSB Accounts. If ever there’s another person claiming that they have wrongly transferred to your account, we will need to seek your permission first before we can deduct the said amount from your account.”
The bank asked Ms de Souza to contact them before she asked them to implement more fail-safes to better protect customers from such situations:
Read Ms de Souza’s post in full here:
/-TISG
Update: The recipient returned my money after I contacted them again and informed them I was going to make a police…
Posted by Desiree Anne de Souza on Sunday, 31 March 2019