Standard Chartered Bank - Staff Arrogance

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If you reside in Dubai, or in UAE in general, I'll give you a small advice, never deal with a bank here called SCB, or Standard Chartered Bank, or even let any of your friends deal with this bank or further don't allow your contact number to reach this bank. It's because of this banks' staff impoliteness, stupidity, arrogance, and over all consistency of arrogance..!

Here's the story, few years ago, a friend of mine applied for a credit card at this bank and put my name as a reference and of course gave my mobile number.

A reference, as he was told was to assist the bank in contacting the client when the bank fails to contact the client itself. Fair enough. The bank staff assured the client 'my friend' that time, that this was a standard procedure and nobody would bother the reference.

Over the time, the bank kept on increasing the spending limit of my friend's card and was charging an annual fee of around $150, or maybe more, earning interest from outstanding amounts unpaid by the client 'my friend', since they asked him to repay only 5% of his monthly bill and in a small calculation due to the spending behavior of my friend 'the client' and what he used to use the card for, I believe the bank, Standard Chartered, had earned almost double the spending limit it gave to my friend at least within the first 2 years.

This looks fine, the economy was having a boom, my friend was receiving continuous calls from the bank to inform him about new limits until crisis started. Then my friend 'the client' lost huge amounts of monies in real estate market, has a huge amount of money still residing in few Escrow accounts in different banks including SCB itself, under developers' names awaiting court orders, and gradually my friend 'the client' hadn't the ability to keep on paying his monthly bills.

Beginning of this year, I started receiving phone calls from different staff in this bank on my personal mobile asking me sometimes to pay on behalf of my friend 'their client', sometimes to assist them in locating him..! and sometime threatening me, yes, literally THREATENING ME that they will put my friend 'their client' in jail, call me to court, posing a travel ban on my friend 'THEIR CLIENT', and so many other things.

By first phone call, I did call my friend to figure out why he gave my number in the beginning to them, and told me what I explained above that he was told. Then I informed him 'my friend', 'their client', that I received that call from a bank officer who was swearing at me and asking me to help them locate 'my friend', their client. And surprisingly, my friend 'their client' told me that he already submitted a letter to this bank asking them for a settlement of all his dues and still awaiting their answer..!

I stopped worrying, but later on, phone calls started pouring again to my personal mobile from different extensions in the same bank and by the same staff and also different staff at the same time again threatening me, swearing at me, asking me to bring them my friend 'their client', help them secure the payments.. as if I was working for them. Once I remember I burst at the caller when I started losing temper and asked him the following simple questions:

1. Did the bank take my approval to grant the credit card to my friend 'its client'?! Answer: No.

2. Did the bank take my approval when increasing the spending limit of my friend's card, 'their client's card'?! Answer: No.

3. Did the bank share with me any of the annual charges it earned from my friend 'its client'?! Answer: No.

4. Did the bank call me at any time and tell me that its sharing with me part of the profit in the form of interest received from its client 'my friends' card?! Answer: No.

Then I asked the real question: WHY THE HELL THEN THE BANK IS CALLING ME CONTINUOUSLY?!!! And of course, the brilliant answer was: Because he's your friend and you should help us get the payments from him...!!!!

I asked the caller not to call my number any more as I'm not interested in working for them. But that was in my dreams. Simply, I believe they either don't understand plain English, or even Arabic. One time I passed the phone to a friend who was sitting beside me and she tried to explain to them to stop calling me in Russian, but no use.. They don't understand.

Today I received a phone call again from the same bank, I asked the guy to stop calling me and call directly their client. He called back within less than 20 seconds from a different number, again I asked him to stop calling me and I hang up, then I received a 3rd call within a minute from a third number..!! yes and it was this time an Arabic guy, and when I found out he's calling from the same bank for the same reason, I told him that just a minute ago a stupid guy was calling me about the same story and twice I told him to stop calling me. The new guy replied: yes, he's my colleague..!!!

I told this guy not to call me any more and I hung up the phone. Can you imagine that he called back within less than a minute and from a different number?!! Then I was bursting again since he spoiled my mood and I asked him if he understands any language so I can get him a translator and ask him to stop calling my number, and he replied very stupidly: since he's your friend 'their client', we will keep on calling you.

I just have a question to the management of this stupid bank: How do you choose your staff? Do you put advertisement on your website? Do you use assistance from professional companies in HR? Or you just go to the stable and pick some animals, put them behind desks, give them a list of numbers and make them irritate people?!!

Numbers I was receiving calls from:

04-3595459
04-3514136
04-3526945
04-3591965
04-3526516
04-3554514

All today called me within a 10 minutes time phase. Isn't that too much?!
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