Insights for participants
If a consumer is unable to communicate effectively with their financial service provider, it often results in a complaint. Keeping lines of communication open with consumers can go a long way in helping to resolve a stressful situation, like money being stolen from the consumer’s account, much faster.
What happened?
Maria has an account with a money transfer service, which she used to make purchases while overseas. While Maria was in Singapore, $900 and $400 was stolen from Maria’s account using payWave. Maria notified the Singapore police and the money transfer service.
Maria had a difficulty communicating with the money transfer service about the money stolen from her account, so she complained to FSCL.
What were the parties’ views?
Maria complained:
- About the money transfer service’s email systems. She said that their email address did not work because any email she tried to send would get rejected. She did not appreciate the transfer service suggesting she set up a new email address to resolve the issue, rather than assessing their own IT issues.
- That the service took weeks to respond to her emails when her emails did go through and, when they responded, they would ask for information that she had already provided.
The money transfer service said that they had attempted to recall both transactions. They said that the recalls had been successful, and they had been able to return Maria’s money to her. They offered Maria $150 as compensation to recognise the communication difficulties she experienced.
What was the outcome of FSCL’s investigation?
We did not complete a full investigation of Maria’s complaint, because she accepted the money transfer service’s offer of $150 compensation to resolve her complaint.
