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!
