Mr. Richard D. Fairbank, the Founder and CEO of Capital
One Financial Corporation must hear this!
Having been a customer of Capital One Bank for several
years, I never imagined a time would come when the bank in Delaware would
suddenly suffer some form of amnesia in regard to my identity. My first “crime”
in this matter is that I'm a Nigerian-American. The second one is that I dare to
make some Nigerian-related transactions with my credit card. I tried to buy a
flight ticket for my wife who is coming from Nigeria. And I tried to pay for a
Nigerian passport with the card. Of course, both of these transactions were promptly
declined. It has always been like this each time I try to make a transaction that
relates to Nigeria. And I firmly believe that whatever negative experience the
bank has had with some few unscrupulous Nigerians is not a license for them to harass or stereotype me or other innocent Nigerians. That was why, this time, I made a proactive
call to the bank to inform them about the intended transactions in a bid to forestall
the problem that is now at hand. Unknown to me though, it was the call that led to
their “suspicion”. Yet, no one had the courtesy via a phone call or e-mail to
alert me that my credit card account has been suspended because I intended to
make payments for some Nigerian-related transactions.
After they declined the transactions, I called the bank and for the first 30
minutes, I was given the run-around on the phone by the “Customer Service”.
Finally, I was transferred to the “Fraud Unit”. And there, my ordeal escalated
as I was made to feel like a criminal. In the process of “confirming my
identity”, one guy said he wanted to first confirm my phone number. After putting
me on hold for several minutes, he came back on the line to admit his daftness;
he could not confirm my phone number because I was talking with him on the same
phone! The matter soon assumed a worse dimension when one guy who introduced
himself as “James” came on the line. James was practically and obviously having
fun at my expense. He did everything verbally to ridicule and stereotype me
under the pretext of “confirming my identity”. One moment, James was asking me
about the type and color of my car and the addresses of all the houses I had
lived in the past ten years. And the next moment, he was telling me, “…people
like you go about with expired drivers’ license…”
Today is the twelfth day that my Capital One credit card
has been suspended, all because I am a Nigerian-American!
8 comments:
Are you kidding me! Capital One Bank?
What a shame! To be treated so shabbily by a bank you've been with for so many years!
If I were you, I'd have transferred my account to another bank immediately it happened. They don't deserve your business.
This is terrible! My egbon, you need to take some more serious actions against Capital One. Among the actions is by taking your account to another bank. Put this story on some social media. I also appreciate your writing about it through this medium. You never know..there maybe other Nigerians being treated negatively like this. And I will definitely copy/share this story with other Nigerians.
As sad as this story may appear, it is certainly not a new thing emanating from corporate America. The problem is that many victims simply choose to lick their wounds and move on. Some of these victims don't even bother to exercise their rights by taking their precious businesses somewhere else. It's high time we (the immigrants from Africa in particular) began to share our individual experiences for others to know. And above all, it's time we saw our individual patronage of corporate America as a form of economic power. I want to thank this blogger for sharing his experience publicly.
I must thank all of you guys for your kind comments. The main objective of sharing this experience is to sensitize other "victims" of the negative attitudes being exhibited everyday by some prejudiced employees of corporate America. Unless we all publicly share our experiences (especially in the social media), those at the helms of affairs of those companies can always claim to be unaware. Thanks again.
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