RIYADH: In front of many banks stand men willing to offer you a little service for a small fee: They will pay through ATM machines your parking tickets and government fees if you don’t have accounts with the concerned banks.
According to Afzar Ali, an employee at a contracting company, the account holder can cancel fees paid to the government — in this case the Passport Department — moments later. This means that anyone using these people to facilitate payments may become victims of racketeering.
Now that Ali claims he was robbed of SR2,000, he would like to warn others not to hand money to perfect strangers.
According to Ali, a man who said his name was Mohammed Javid from Pakistan offered to facilitate a payment to the Passport Department through his bank account. Ali had to pay to add a dependent onto his work/residency permit. He said that he witnessed the transaction, and showed Arab News the receipt that stated that the payment had been made. It turns out, however, that the payment never went through.
When Ali confronted a bank representative, the person told him that the account holder had canceled the transaction a couple of minutes after the payment had been made. Now, Ali’s only recourse is to file a police complaint and begin an arduous process of legal maneuvering until the bank is authorized to reimburse him the money from the customer’s account. For Ali, it’s not worth the time and effort to get into a long process that could take weeks and involve many visits to the government and private bureaucracy, especially when the outcome isn’t guaranteed to result in the recuperation of his money.
It’s not known if all payments to the government (such as the Passport Department, Traffic Department or the Electricity Company) are reversible, or if it’s just a select few payments that can be reversed by the account holder. It’s also not known if such cancellations are services offered by specific banks, or if all banks offer such cancellation options. For Ali, it no longer matters; he’s sworn off using the services of these people.
It is common to see people milling around banks that offer payments to the Traffic Department, such as license renewals or ticket payments. “They take a commission of SR10 and the money goes directly to the relevant account and there is no receipt given,” he said. “It is solely done on trust.”
In this case Ali has a receipt but it has done him no good. His final message to those that take advantage of this service: Buyers beware.
