Mistakes take an eternity to correct
Click the wrong button and paying bills online can prove to be a gauntlet
Mistakes happen. It’s a familiar theme in the emails I get from Toronto Star readers.
Sometimes the customer is at fault. And sometimes the company is at fault.
In Shelly Goldstein’s case, he made the initial error when using online banking to pay a credit-card bill last June. He pressed the wrong key and mistakenly paid $444 to his Freedom Mobile account.
I’ve done it myself: clicking the wrong button on a screen and sending money to the wrong creditor. While it takes only minutes to overpay, it can take weeks to get the money back
Goldstein asked his telecom supplier for a refund. He was told that the money would have to go back to his bank.
With the $444 still missing a month later, he learned Freedom Mobile had made its own mistakes.
“The overpayment was credited back to the Bank of Montreal, which is not my bank. My bank, Tangerine, is a subsidiary of the Bank of Nova Scotia,” he said.
“Freedom also claimed the amount applied to my account was $392.92, with the $51.08 balance applied to HST (sales tax), so I’d get a credit of only $392.92. That’s not correct, since there was nothing owing on my account with them.”
Goldstein was told to call BMO, since Freedom Mobile didn’t have the funds any longer. He had to quote an 18-digit transfer number and arrange to get his money back. But BMO said Freedom Mobile had to recall the funds. Later, BMO told him it had returned the funds, but the phone company said it had no records of the transaction.
“I went ballistic, having gone back and forth, being given incorrect information, for several months.”
Goldstein finally got his full refund in September after I contacted Chethan Lakshman, vice-president of external affairs at Shaw Communications in Calgary (which owns Freedom Mobile).
Thomas Krul is a loyal customer of Structube, a Canadian furniture chain with more than 60 locations.
He bought a Whistler bookcase, said to be the last one in stock, and set a date for delivery.
Later, the acting manager of the Ottawa store called to say the Whistler bookcase had been sold to someone else.
He’d have to wait until midDecember to receive his purchase or ask for his money back.
“I went to the store and the employees were unwilling to help resolve my problem, only repeating the mantra that I was free to obtain a refund. This is a great way to anger a faithful customer of decades,” Krul said.
“How about trying to defuse the situation and offering to show the customer around the store or the website to find an alternative product that might replace the one that was sold from under them?
“This doesn’t sit right with me. The shelf was sold to me. The inventory system flagged it as sold.
“I purchased it on the basis that it was in stock and available to me.
“I’d love to let their senior management know how unhappy I am.”
Rachel Finamore, whose name I found on a news release, thanked me for bringing the issue to the company’s attention.
She said the experience had been flagged with the president of Structube and head office was working on a solution.
Two days later, the retailer managed to locate the Whistler bookcase he wanted.
“The discovery was too late,” Krul told me. “I am in a rush to furnish an apartment, so I had already taken the refund option and purchased a shelving unit at Ikea.
“But I’m glad to know that Structube management is at least aware of how easy it is to anger a longtime customer and to be more careful when setting expectations.”
Ramin Pezeshgzad asked for help with a mistake made by his 89-year-old mother.
He had found a cheque in her old purse for $4,800 — the proceeds of a guaranteed investment certificate that matured in 2002.
His mother, he said, spoke little English.
She would not have under- stood the letter from her bank, enclosing a cheque in a sealed envelope.
“She kept all her pension cheques stashed in the pockets of her clothes. Luckily, government-issued cheques never get stale-dated and I was able to cash them for her once I found them. But this one, she never even opened — and even if she had opened it, she would not have cashed it.
“My mom was not financially literate, so whoever at the bank suggested opening the GIC for her should have had it roll over upon expiry, making it double in interest by now.”
Her son was offered 50 per cent ($2,400), but wanted the full amount. He cited my 2017 column about CIBC cashing a $9,555 cheque for a longtime customer whose GIC had matured in 1991.
RBC agreed to look into the complaint again but concluded that no further action was required.
“Based on the policies and procedures we have in place to manage stale-dated cheques, as well as our interactions with Ms. Pezeshgzad during the time the cheque was issued and subsequently became stale-dated, we are confident that she would have received her funds,” spokesperson AJ Goodman said.
“We have advised Mr. Pezeshgzad that if he is able to locate his mother’s bank books from the time period in question indicating otherwise, then we will be happy to revisit this matter.”
The records have disappeared. In my view, the son was lucky to recover half of a 16year-old cheque that he could not prove to the bank’s satisfaction was never cashed.
What do you think?