RIYADH, 25 April — Ghadah, a Saudi, has been a satisfied customer of Tamimi-Safeway supermarket in Riyadh for eight years — until October last year, in fact, when Ghadah and her sisters were shopping at the Tamimi-Safeway adjacent to Sahara mall.

Ghadah recalled: “I was the last one to pay for my things. The total was SR160. I paid with my ATM card. I was coming down with a cold that day. The Bangladeshi cashier took my card and scanned it, then gave me a receipt. I signed it and was handed back my receipt along with my card — or at least so I believed.”

When Ghadah checked her handbag the next day, the ATM card was not there. She sent her sisters to Tamimi-Safeway to report the card missing, but the staff there said that they knew nothing about it.

When she called the Saudi American Bank to cancel her card, she was horrified to be told that SR5,000 had been withdrawn from her account on the night she had visited Tamimi-Safeway.

So it was clear that the ATM card had been stolen and used illegally.

Ghadah did not immediately suspect any employee at Safeway supermarket. However, when two weeks later her sisters visited the Fal-Complex Safeway store and were given the card by a branch manager who had recognized their surname and who had found the card in one of the office drawers, Ghadah became convinced that a member of the staff had been involved.

The branch manager was very sympathetic and promised he would write and submit a report. But the next day he reneged on that promise, and now more agitated told Ghadah to contact the regional manager for Jeddah, Riyadh and Dammam.

The regional manager himself was duly contacted and the number of the cashier who dealt with Ghadah’s card transaction was passed on.

Again, he too initially seemed sympathetic. However, after “looking into it” he also claimed that there was nothing he could do because no one had come forward to admit to the crime and there was no evidence that clearly pointed to any one suspect.

Never the less, Ghadah independently pursued her investigations. She had to overcome considerable obstacles, including being denied any direct contact with a Saudi senior staff member at Safeway supermarket and then to one Mr. Cooley, who she was told repeatedly was the “head guy”.

“I was advised by Mr. Cooley’s secretary to ‘forget the whole case’,” Ghadah told Arab News. “But I persisted and explained the case to one of the security guards, who advised me to talk to Mohamed Tamimi himself.”

She duly spoke to a man who claimed to be Tamimi, who reassured her that the SR5,000 would be returned to her.

He also said that she should meet a man called Abdul Aziz at the Sahara branch, who later admitted that he had pretended to be Tamimi during the previous telephone conversation.

“He told me I would feel relaxed if I didn’t actually have to speak to the senior guy!” Ghadah recalled.

She was told to identify the cashier who last dealt with her card.

Ghadah refused, since he could easily be identified by the cashier number on her receipt and she did not want to risk mistakenly accusing someone who may be innocent.

Her case was ignored for a week. When at last she was contacted, she was told to “put everything on hold”.

So now Ghadah is an unsatisfied, and former, customer of Tamimi-Safeway. When she spoke to Arab News, she was distressed and angry. And her case remains “on hold”!

She is still without her SR5,000, and without any help in her bid to track down the person responsible.

Of course, it would be impossible for any company to guarantee that all of its staff members are entirely trustworthy. With that in mind, there should be no need for Tamimi-Safeway to shy away from admitting that something wrong has happened in one of their branches, or be embarrassed by trying to resolve the matter.

After all, nothing less than its reputation is at stake.

When Arab News yesterday spoke to Amer Daboul at Safeway Head Office in Riyadh about this case, and explained that this article would be appearing in the paper today, he immediately promised the store would compensate the SR5,000 to Ghadah.

He added that it had been impossible to prove and identify the person who had withdrawn Ghadah’s money, but that the cashier who had handled her card before she discovered it was missing — and who was therefore the most likely suspect — has subsequently been dismissed from his job and ordered to leave the Kingdom.