Following a spirited complaint and. social media advocacy by SQUEAK, about the refusal of SG Ghana to sign and stamp a customer’s bank statement, the bank has finally issued the customer with a cover letter to serve the purpose for which she needed the statement.
The customer, Priscilla Anaman Awuah, needed a stamped and signed bank statement to go boost her monthly mobile money transaction threshold at MTN, but the bank refused to sign and stamp the statement after charging her GHC15.
Their excuse was that it is their new policy not to sign and stamp bank statements.
Priscilla had to do a back and forth between the Fanofaa branch of the bank and MTN office at Circle three times but to no avail.
She then turned to SQUEAK to intervene on her behalf, and we did by filing a formal complaint to Bank of Ghana (BoG) and also sending a direct message SG Ghana via Facebook Messager. We also made a public post on the Facebook page of our editor to generate public discussion of the matter.
The matter got the attention of BoG and the SG Ghana Head Office, both of whom replied to the complaints, promising to investigate and revert.
A day after the complaint, Priscilla went back to her branch, but the manager insisted she still can’t sign and stamp the statement, but she rather wrote a letter addressed “To whom it may concern” stating their “no signing, no stamping policy”, and signed that letter and provided her personal phone number.
SQUEAK then made a call to MTN and inquired if the signed letter will suffice and MTN agreed to accept it, so Priscilla presented it and got her mobile money monthly transaction threshold boosted.
But the branch manager sought to confront SQUEAK for making the matter public and possibly causing her bosses and or BoG to question her about the matter.
Two surprising issues stand out: firstly, if it was a company policy not to sign and stamp their own document, why would it worry them if the matter is made public and people share their opinions about it.
Secondly, why would the bank refuse to do something as simple as stamping and signing their own document, but be willing to do a relatively more cumbersome thing as typing a letter, printing it out and signing it just to restate their no stamp, no signing policy?
SQUEAK finds it very customer-unfriendly for the bank to keep such a policy, which shortchanges customers.
What is, however, important is that, SQUEAK got Priscilla the result she wanted and she can now transact a higher amount with her mobile money wallet every month.
#SQUEAKgetsresults
