Equity Boss James Mwangi "EQUITY BANK, (Equity Bank Kenya)
I hope you’re back to work coz I need you to pay some attention here. Some time early December our dad realized he was not able to use his EQUITEL pin. He called Customer care and after unsuccessful resets, one of your representatives advised him to go to his branch in Limuru and get his pin changed.
Dad is a man of principle and interacts with respectful civility with all people. Has been always. He is retired and currently does small scale farming.
Back to Equity, he pays a visit to Equity Limuru. First point of contact is the customer Service desk. Dad is of course his respectful self. The bank official , not so much. He narrated the issue and the lady immediately tells him that the line he is talking of is not his and he should tell them where he got it... kindly note this is a line that matches his Safaricom line which he has had forever. Back and forth and they finally sort things out by renewing the SIM card.
This is where it gets interesting.
On getting home, Dad got a message that he had an outstanding loan of Ksh 34,000 and then notifications for repayment with a deadline of 27th Dec 2018 started coming through thick and fast as Jeff would say He went back to the bank obviously emphatic that he had no such loan. The bank manager was exceptionally rude and liberally mistreated my dad till he wondered what he could possibly have done to offend the manager so much There’s a bank form the manager was supposed to give for a complaint to be filled for escalation and action. The bank manager refused to give the form. Dad went there three times asking for that form, the manager threw him out telling him to go report to the police and bring the OB number.
Well Dad did exactly that, he went and reported to the police and emailed the complaint and OB Number. The matter was assigned an incident report number by the bank.
Now, like I mentioned, dad is retired and on pension. When his pension for December hit the account, it was deducted in its entirety to pay the “loan” and he continues to receive notifications for the balance... (yeah it’s disturbing how small pensions can be after decades of working )
I have soooo many questions and this whole matter is extremely upsetting but what infuriates me is the lack of empathy by EQUITY.
Important to mention that it became apparent in the many visits paid to the bank that the money was withdrawn through another number. The guy actually withdrew 34K, checked balance, got a message that there was 300 remaining and withdrew 200 bob. It has also been established that Dad was on an active call at the time exact time the transaction was happening and at a very different location!!!!
Pray tell!!! How do you take up an individuals entire pension to pay a disputed loan with such glaring evidence!!!??? As big as you are ! Could you not flag the account to stop the automatic deduction? What’s with your Limuru Branch bank manager? And his staff? Why are they acting so weird??? Do they know something??? I am an Equity customer myself. Have been since I was in Campus. So first of all that’s done!!! I am out the door. Meanwhile, do something about this issue before you lose all your customers. Nobody wants to be a client of a bank that looses them money and mishandles them doing it!
Nkt."