Bpay Fiasco

I had a pretty bad experience with bpay today unfortunately.

Bpay is a common online banking service we have here in Australia. People use it online at the banks website or goto a post office to make bill payments; hence Bpay. Something similar to the NETS system in Singapore.

My vehicle broke down yesterday and so I called RACV to get help.

Back in April I made payment for RACV (my vehicle roadside assistance service). Online payments get no hardcopy paper receipt. But I did copy down the receipt number. And the bank statement to prove the payment.

The RACV operator replied "No, you taven't paid your bill."

I went "Pardon? I made payment for it in April. $172 dollars"

Operator goes, "No sollyee. No payment waz receivedvv. You did not-ah make paymentmn."

"Look, I've got my bank statment as proof. It reads "Payment made to RACV receipt number 12345"

Operator says - "No soolly U ged the bank to contact us. We want the reference number. Not the receipt numbah."

"Yeah, my reference number is xxx. Can't I fax over the bank statment?"

"No solly..." RACV operator repeats her statement again and again and again and adds, "You must have put in the wrong reference number. Now solly come again goodbye."

I hung up. Call the bank. Bank says - receipt number is good enough. Nope, they don't have the reference number. It should be the on on your bill anyhow.

I call up RACV and get the same mind-numbing irritating Southern Asian ethnic response. When I offer to pay first and then resolve the matter later - the operator responses - yes, but that won't entitle me to the full membership services.

@#$%.

I go to the bank. And speak to a girl who with a name of a rock, you know pyrite etc.., that sort of thing. She gets the details confused and wastes a good one hour finding out the receipt number - which I already have. I'm not surprised. She's got a thick accent with a similar IQ.

Then she spends another hour trying to locate the reference number which will id the account. Apparently it takes a week or a month to track it down.

I then had this image of a very fat ugly person at the Bpay office gossiping away with his friends on twitter and munching on a burger telling her that it'd take him a week to do CTRL-F(ind).

And its going to cost you $30. "DIRTY DOLLAHA IS THAT ALRIGHT??? HA??? Dirty dollahhhs..."

I nearly swore... the words were forming on my tongue like a floodwater... $30 to track down a bill costing $170. M@#$*($@&&!&ker

I didn't. But I did express my dismay at the whole outcome. And no, not going to spend $30 to find that out.

I went home, angry... and then I prayed. I seem to be doing that a fair bit these days. But I prayed that it would be resolved properly.

I called RACV and got someone who could speak English properly. He does a bit of checking and finds out where the missing payment went. HURRAY!!! His name is Nathan. My savior!!!! He apologized for the delay and fixed it all up.

Finally, got it all settled out.

Next time whenever I do any online payments - I'm going to do a screenshot and save the data for future reference.

But bloody oath, the new service staff from a certain Southern sub-continent are really terrible.