I am a priority account holder at Standard Chartered Nigeria. I cannot believe how I have been treated by this low life bank.

Standard Chartered is an International brand with headquarters in the UK as someone who banks with HSBC UK I expected at least the same level of service with the Nigerian branch of Standard Chartered.

To my horror this is not to be.

For starters the bank has literally closed all its branches inconveniencing it’s customers greatly.

Next is the horrible customer experience. It took more than three months to get a new bank card after my Visa card expired. While I was waiting I was subjected to a minimal experienced offshore customer service which you can reach by phone only. A trip to their barely existing branch will not solve your issue. I also could not apply for the new card on their so called app as they originally stipulated.
So far it is nearly impossible to reach my bank account manager either by phone or email for a priority account holder.

I recently tried to pay my daughters school fees and this has also proved impossible as they place retarded bank limits on your account and their systems to change it does not work. If you have an issue the bottom line is there is literally no one local to assist.

Beware of this bank!!!

My brother who had to work in Mexico recently has also had a hair raising experience with this bank.
He sent the complaint below to Standard Chartered and they never provided him with a solution

Hi SC, I would like to commend you for making my valentine’s Day a dystopic nightmare that could have led to my arrest and deportation while on vacation in Mexico.

I chose to bank with SC on the assumption, foolish as it turned out, that a global bank in Nigeria would at least be remotely competent especially as it pertains to Nigeria’s dreadful customer service reputation. Moreover, I assumed a global bank would have clear lines of communication to keep the internal command chain apprised of basic customer information such as the existence of a geoblock on a debit card.

Turns out that assumptions do make an ass out of you and me.

I informed the bank that I will be using my USD debit travel card overseas for POS and online transactions in countries such as Mexico. I even decided to limit my use of the card to transactions with reputable merchants such as google and uber. Despite the foregoing, an attempt to pay an Uber fare was stymied by multiple card errors.

Picture the scene: a black guy wielding a Nigerian passport trying to plead with an uber driver in the middle of nowhere in Mexico city at night in incoherent spanish. Suffice to say, I only managed to avoid an arrest by Mexico’s benign police by the grace of a samaritan walking by.

Having narrowly escaped potential prison time, it dawned on me that I was now utterly unable to use my card. From POS to ATM terminals, I was inundated with payment error messages. With limited cash on hand, I was slowly imploding.

I spent approximately two fruitless and maddening days attempting to decipher the reason behind my card issue. No one, and I mean no one, could proffer a solution. I spent unsalvageable hours with a risible cast of customer service agents in India, while communicating with SC staff at my local branch in Ikoyi.

They were all infuriatingly unanimous in their conviction that my card was perfectly fine and active, devoid of any holds, spending limits, or blocks. This defied credulity as I used the card for over a week without incident. The sudden error smacked of an internal control issue with the bank. But no, they insisted that all checks were made and my card had a clean bill of health.

I’ve had to survive on the kindness of strangers to mitigate the fallout from this depressing episode, which left me stranded for over a day in Mexico.

It’s a cold morning now in Mexico city and I’m wide awake in fury. I just received a random call from a staff of SC’s card unit informing me that my card was indeed blocked due to a suspicious transaction on the ‘nefarious’ platform that is google pay.

The apologies were half-hearted and frankly intensified my smoldering rage. Why is there such bad communication within the bank?? What is the point of a customer service, especially one that is outsourced to presumably enhance quality, that has no access to the very information they need to advise the customer??

I’m fighting the impulse to frame this farcical saga as emblematic of Nigeria’s contempt for small details. Depressingly, it is.

You can take the boy out of Nigeria, but you will always take her problems with you.

Standard Chartered Nigeria is 100% taking advantage of Nigerians and have the worst customer service in the country.

I am a priority account holder at Standard Chartered Nigeria. I cannot believe how I have been treated by this low life bank.