I had taken an overdraft facility with one of the local banks many years ago in early 90s. I tested what an overdraft facility was all about and it was useful. Subsequently when I purchased one of the houses in Kulim of Kedah state, I applied through another bank, instead of giving me a term loan, they suggested me some sort of an overdraft housing loan. With my prior experience of an overdraft facility, I thought it was a good idea because if I have sufficient fund later on, then I could settle the borrowing much earlier. Only problem was that, EPF at that time would not allow anyone to withdraw and settle an overdraft housing loan, EPF will only permit settling of housing term loan only. That was the disadvantage!
One fine day, someone in the bank from the earlier overdraft facility account had given me a "windfall", they had by mistake credited my account in the region of RM10-11K, and I happily consumed most of the extra fund to furnish my new Kulim home. Then they later found out and admitted that they had made a mistake and charged me exorbitant interest rate for over the pre-set limit. How unreasonable banks could be!
My old school mate happened to be a EON bank manager, and I wanted to refinance my Kulim house to get cheaper interest rate at that time when the banks were engaging in this low interest financing war. When I took up the matter to the officer, and this lady oficer Ms Ho was very professional and she had convincingly persuaded me to stay on with the same bank and gave me an additional house renovation loan of RM30K instead. It happened that the overdraft housing loan bank and my earlier overdraft facility bank merged, and this RM30K was used to settle the mistakenly deposited money given to me and also there was some extra cash left for me to spend on. That seemed to be a good deal and I therefore decided to stay with the same bank without swapping the loan to EON bank.
Since it was an additional renovation loan through the same bank, therefore every month the instalment is settled through the account of the original overdraft housing loan by a standing instruction. That is to say, I deposit my money into one account, and the account will auto-debit to settle both the original housing loan and also the renovation loan at the same time. Was it not a brilliant idea?
Over the years, I had faithfully serviced all my loans regardless of good time or recession. And at the later part, when I worked overseas I managed to deposit a lot of cash into the housing loan account, and the outstanding was set to zero prior to its maturity date with positive balance.
The trouble started when the auto-debit action stopped, re-started and stopped again. And also my overdraft housing loan LIMIT suddenly became zero pre-maturely without any reason. It was before the expiry date of the housing loan agreement! How could a principal loan account finished off earlier before the renovation loan is fully settled, which is an additional and integral part of the package? The collection centers called me and I explained the matter many times to them, telling them it is their computer system problem that the auto-debit stopped. And the calls came from Prai and then KL offices etc over and over again for a few years. The bank utilized my extra fund from my overdraft and regularized the account in 2007 for all the mistake that they had made. Unfortuntely the trouble started again with their computerized auto-debit system even after that.
Because of their incompetency in this, they are going to charge me an accumulative interest of RM15K instead of the total amount of RM12K as stated in the agreement for a principal sum of RM30K to be settled over a period of 10 years. Adding to my anger is that, this is none of my problem. How could a bank did this at their whim and mercy? Nobody knows why a computerized standing instruction could start and stop, as a consumer we could probably guess or suspicious of some insider siphoning out the money to somewhere else without our knowledge!
Now I have to trace back all the old transactions to find out the truth by writing to the bank! If things do not turn out well after all that I had done, I might have no choice but to refer the matter to Bank Negara or the Bureau of Complaint.
The name of the bank is intentionally withheld to give them time to settle the matter.
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