Professional Closure with Standard Chartered

Salam Ramadhan to all my fellow readers. I would like to take this opportunity to wish all Muslims a happy and religious holy month of Ramadhan.

It is been a while since I am writing (or typing) in English. I might as well do so to polish up my English literature. Anyway, just love to write up an update on the progress of my current AKPK account undergoing.

Recently, I received a mail through snail mail that one of my credit card accounts which were under Standard Chartered has completely been settled through AKPK. For this particular account, I was once having their credit card with RM6,000 (fully overlimit) when I took the Debt Management Program (DMP) under AKPK. After AKPK discussion with the bank, Standard Chartered agreed to AKPK term to convert my credit card overdue to term loan with interest rate of 9% p.a.

After 3 years, that debt has been paid, in full. During under the shade of AKPK, Standard Chartered remain professional of allowing my online account to be active and duly updated online, each and every month payment that been transferred between AKPK and the bank.

Some of the months, Standard Chartered recorded a late payment and charge a small amount of late payment to my account. This late payment charge is quite norm to all banks under AKPK. I had asked my AKPK’s counselor about this since I always wired the monthly payment to AKPK on time. The counselor assured me that AKPK also distribute the payment a.s.a.p to all banks as soon as they received them from me. However, the collection center’s agent in the bank that may have processed the payment late that could have triggered the bank system to charge my account as late payment. However, the lower interest that Standard Chartered given me throughout my DMP has always been bless and I do not really mind a small amount paid for the late payment.

It seems, again, due to the delay of the payment processed, the closure of my Standard Chartered account has cross over the mid of month whereby AKPK had already transferred the next month payment to the bank. Thus my loan account now has excess payment.

I do not want to go through the hassle of calling the collection center’s agent (since it is always hard to get to them through phone), so I just write them an email to the customer service through my online account. I doubt that they would reply, but to my astonishment, they did. Professional as they go, they assured me that the excess payment will be send to me by cheque soon.

Not 1 week after their reply, I received their cheque and letter to reimburse the excess payment which were sent through courier. I updated AKPK on this, and within a week, mail from AKPK regarding reduced monthly payment (deducting the Standard Chartered payment) received to my doorstep.

AKPK counselor also contacted me through email recommended that I asked Standard Chartered to send me a release letter for official closure of my account. So I wrote, again, to Standard Chartered through online account (which still active, by the way, with the account balance showed zero), and remarkably they couriered me the release letter around 1 week later.

I just would like to thank Standard Chartered with the service of their credit card and also an amazingly professionalism shown during the DMP period and by the closure of my debt account with them. Not many bank shown such a passionate service to their customer after the account went to collection center but Standard Chartered definitely among the most professional.