A Touch 'N Go User Was Overcharged By RM1,800 Due To A System Glitch
It took him about six months before he got a closure.
By Tang Ruxyn — 01 Jul 2016, 06:53 PM
The thought of linking a credit card to a Touch 'n Go access card should be something that brings greater convenience for users and it should be a seamless process
Touch ’n Go Zing card service is provided by Touch 'n Go Sdn. Bhd. in partnership with participating banks, where auto reload functions will be available to enable the relevant credit card account to be debited with an amount equal to the auto reload value.
The auto reload amount ranges from RM50 to RM300, depending on the participating banks. Auto reload is limited to one reload for every 24 hours, and this will only happen at toll lanes.
According to Touch 'n Go's website, every time the card balance reaches RM50, it will trigger the auto reload mechanism to reload the pre-selected denomination into the card.
Unfortunately, a user will now think twice when using this service especially after he was wrongly charged on multiple occasions, due to a system glitch
When Nitin Bhoria received a letter from Touch ’n Go Sdn Bhd (TNGSB) in December last year detailing several problematic transactions, he immediately became concerned.
According to the letter he received, the company informed him that there were eight instances of auto reload which were not charged to his credit card and that they have charged him for those transactions accordingly.
"I got suspicious, because first of all, it’s their fault."
"Why are they not charging the transactions (properly)?"
malaysiakini.com
It all started when Nitin noticed that there was something amiss with his credit card billings
"As we know, online credit card statements are only available for the last few months, but I found some discrepancies there. I managed to prove five of the charges from Touch ‘n Go were duplicate charges," Nitin told Free Malaysia Today (FMT).
From then on, he said he was shuttled from one department to another in Touch 'n Go before the company admitted that the five payments were erroneously billed to his credit card.
They refunded RM500 for the five duplicate charges, but Nitin still felt uneasy with Touch 'n Go’s explanation how the mistake happened.
The company blamed the overcharging on a technical glitch, but chose to keep quiet about it until Nitin brought up his discovery, with proof.
Following this, Nitin made his own investigations and found another 18 duplicate charges to his credit card from Touch ’n Go
Nitin felt uneasy after the first ordeal, so he decided to probe further to check if there were other instances when he was overcharged. To do this, he went through his credit card statements from his bank and cross-checked with his Touch 'n Go reload transactions.
Much to his own surprise, Nitin eventually found out that there was a total of 19 duplicate charges that amounted to RM1,800 on his credit card as Touch 'n Go transactions.
However, none of the RM1,800 billed to him had been added to the card balance.
He was further infuriated when he discovered that burden of proof lies with him
He ended up having to go through "hundreds of pages" of itemised billings from Maybank and Touch 'n Go to crosscheck and prove to both companies that he was overcharged, as reported by Free Malaysia Today.
"I honestly would not expect companies like Touch 'n Go to be so poor in helping a customer. The least you could do is help and investigate," he was quoted as saying by Malaysiakini.
He took six months to sort of the issue with the companies involved.
Touch 'n Go has reportedly refunded all of the RM1,800 that was wrongly charged to Nitin.
It also offered a card worth RM200 as a token of apology with hopes that Nitin would not take legal action against them.
It was reported that Nitin felt that he deserved to receive at least RM1,000 in compensation for all the hassles that he had to go through in order to obtain the refund.
He noted that he was rather fortunate as he noticed the overcharging, but it was only because the amount was hefty.
"But not everyone would notice if it is only a few hundred ringgit more. What about all the rest of them?"
Several local media had gotten in touch with Touch 'n Go and the company's chief executive officer Syahrunizam Samsudin gave the assurance that the system glitch has been fixed
A system migration last year had apparently resulted in a delay in charging the auto reload transaction to its customers’ credit card accounts. This caused some of the transaction to become duplicate charges, the company explained.
"TNGSB has taken proper action by working closely with the related financial institution to make full recovery and at the same time those duplicate charges have been refunded accordingly to the affected customer," the response from Syahrunizam read, as reported by FMT.