High and dry in a foreign land

PASSPORT? CHECK. Foreign exchange? Check. Travel Insurance? Check. Credit card? Check. Switch off the geyser, suspend newspaper delivery and, hey presto, the adventure begins. For the vast majority of South Africans their international travels are a source of great enjoyment, with the most significant hurdle being surly immigration officials.

When journalist Charlene Smith had her purse stolen at the notorious Rome termini on a Saturday afternoon in May, little did she know that – despite her best efforts in dealing with the call centres of Standard Bank, MasterCard and travel insurance firm Chartis – she’d be left penniless for almost 72 hours.

“There were some significant breakdowns in service,” concedes Alan Hales, director of consumer credit cards at Standard Bank card division.

MasterCard South Africa MD Anthony West also admitted failures on behalf of the global card provider, but insisted Smith’s case was an isolated event. “There was an element of human error,” West ventured cautiously. “There were communication challenges.” MasterCard operates a number of global call centres where operators are unlikely to speak the same first language as their customers. That seems to have been a key problem in the Smith case, in which call centre operators either failed to do their jobs or were unable to adequately communicate processes and procedures.

The acknowledgements and offers to defray expenses are cold comfort to Smith, whose idyllic break was ruined by a combination of ineptitude and her bank’s antiquated emergency service model. Smith went on a BlackBerry-driven media offensive about 24 hours after she was robbed. Left with no prospect of a speedy resolution despite numerous calls to the bank, insurer and credit card supplier, she proceeded to email a blow-by-blow account of her experience to her contacts book as well as publish her experiences on a well-known blogsite.

Once she finally received her emergency cash she was left floundering for the better part of a week trying to acquire working replacement cards and resolve resultant banking problems 10 000km from home.

Standard Bank executives kicked into action on the Monday morning when they realised they were sitting on a PR time bomb, but initially insisted its responses to the problem had been adequate and within the realms of existing service level agreements (SLAs).

As far as Standard was concerned, cash had been requested on the Saturday afternoon and delivery by Monday was acceptable in terms of its SLAs, as were other services, including card cancellations, potential fraud updates and ordering new permanent cards on her return to SA.

However, Standard did admit its SLAs operated according to “work” days as opposed to “actual” days – a fact Hales subsequently conceded was unacceptable and would be reviewed.

Six days after the robbery, Smith still had no access to her own cash. One blog entry read: “No surprises – MasterCard emergency card is useless; I went to nine banks today, walked 30km trying to draw cash on it. All refused it. MasterCard Intl says it could do nothing. Standard did nothing as usual. My holiday has been destroyed. I came to learn Italian & have spent all my time fighting banks.”

West insists credit and debit cards provide the most affordable and secure way to fund global travel.

However, Craig MacFarlane, head of retail operations at Bidvest Bank, points out users are vulnerable to currency fluctuations and fraud. “It can also take days to get replacement cards to victims overseas,” says MacFarlane. He has a vested interest, in that Bidvest sells a prepaid card product for travellers. You buy the forex at today’s exchange rate and the amount is loaded on to two cards: one as a backup, which can be left locked in a safe or at worst kept in different baggage, should you be robbed in transit. Should you run out of cash, additional funds can be loaded in SA in minutes, while traditional money transfer services can also be used to provide money to stranded individuals.