Trail Reporters
A customer with First Bank in Uyo, Kufre Etuk has narrated his ordeal in a bank illegal transaction carried out in his account, by a suspected staff of First Bank.
Speaking with Trail Reporters, Kufre who works as a Journalist with Nigerian pulse, expressed his disappointment with the bank.
He said, “my intention is never to discredit the bank involved but to share experience.
On Thursday, 11 April, 2018, I woke up to realise that my account was debited. I was shocked because I never did any transaction that involved such a debited amount. I quickly recalled the only transaction I did the previous day was loading my MTN and Airtel lines. I also noticed that there was neither SMS nor email notifying me about the debited money. I got to know that I was debited when I checked my balance and account statement using Firstbank application.
On knowing this, I quickly transferred a greater part of the remaining amount out of the account and called friends who also bank with Firstbank, but they never experienced such.
I decided to take a trip to Firstbank. On my way, I spent over an hour in a client’s office. At the verge of bidding my client good day and move straight to Firstbank, I decided to check my balance again, behold the money was reversed without any SMS or email notifying me of this.
I insisted visiting Firstbank customer care at Abak road office. On getting there, I presented my complaint and the lady who attended to me was curious to know why I was debited at the first place and quickly asked me to pen down my account number which I did. After checking my account, she raised her head in disappointment and apologized that somebody was trying to carry out a transaction and my account was debited in error.
The questions Firstbank has not answered are: The transaction was done in the night, off official hours, who did the transaction and why that time? Why was I not notified through the usual communication channels Firstbank has been using to communicate to me?
This is my second experience, but first in this form. On 22 December, 2017, at 24/7 Supermarket along Ikot Ekpene road, while using Diamond Bank POS with my Firstbank ATM card, I was debited twice by Firstbank yet the money was not credited to the person. On January 9, 2018,I took a trip to Firstbank Udoudoma street, on checking my account, the staff told that I was only debited once not twice. I presented all pieces of evidence, but he insisted that their machine showed I was debited only once. Till date, Firstbank has not reversed that money to me.
Please develop a constant attitude of checking your account daily whether you carry out transaction or not.
As for me, for now, I am a former Firstbank customer.” he stated.
Efforts to speak with the Bank’s head of Corporate communication did not yield positive result as at the time of this report.
