Obenieta: Money transfer mystery

Monday, January 30, 2012

SOMETHING'S askew when charity, which begins at home, leaves one feeling lost or astray. From each emigrant daring to endure whatever sacrifices while working in other countries, sending money to their families left behind should not leave the heart ticking like a time bomb inside one’s head.

Imagine the inner explosions of insecurity after kidding ourselves as “modern heroes” who supposedly help keep the paper boat of Philippine economy afloat with our regular inflow of remittances. How did we end up as good as gasping for breath, gurgling with waves of worries, and flailing our arms for help?

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Save our souls. Or so that’s how my wife, a middle school teacher in Kansas, must have sounded to the “dispute resolution specialists” of the Better Business Bureau (http://goldengate.bbb.org) to whom we sought succor after we ended up emotionally drained, high and dry over the case of our online money transfer that did not reach our intended recipient in Cebu.

My brother-in-law would have reveled in his monthly role of playing Santa Claus to members of our family who wait for a birthday gift, medication expenses, college tuition, monthly amortization, insurance, and everything else expected from any OFW. His call to us, however, shook us from our sleep.

No less than a nightmare, indeed, to find out what the cashier at M. Lhuillier—-the agency that would supposedly disburse what we sent online through Xoom.com’s global money transfer service—-told him: The money was claimed already.

Oh, really? Only he, with a valid identification card, was authorized as our recipient. So how did it happen that someone else, unknown and unauthorized, could run away after sucking the sweat off our brows? From our subsequent inquiries to Xoom’s customer service agents, we later found out that our money was diverted to an M. Lhuillier branch in Masantol, Pampanga.

Who did it, or how it ended up there, or why it was released that fast and easy to an impostor, left us with more questions on top of the unsettling consensus of conjectures among our friends: The whole mess reeks of an “inside job.”

Working it out by wracking our heads off, we wound up gazing a blank wall. Whatever happened to M. Lhuillier’s safeguard for coded transactions (such as double-checking the claims and vouching for its veracity with strict identification requirements) on top of Xoom’s come-on (“Ranked Highest in Customer Satisfaction" and “you will be getting top quality service and value.”)?

Adding insult to the psychic injury, the response from Xoom’s Pinoy call agents went the whole gamut from ignorant (“We don’t know when you can have your money back until we’re done investigating”) to arrogant.

A certain William Stephen Barrientos, who identified himself as a supervisor for Xoom’s offshore customer service, scoffed off our disquiet when he gloated through the phone that “Xoom is a multi-billion industry, and we will not waste our reputation with just that amount of money you’re complaining about…”

However, what Xoom and M. Lhuillier need to remember is this fact: Time is of the essence in money transfer to our families, and it is their business to be responsible in delivering and proving their promise of immediacy, security, and efficiency.

Though we should have been happy that we finally got our money back after four days of anxiety, both companies’ communication left a lot to yawn about. We have the right to know, and they still owe us an explanation why our money for Cebu wound up in Pampanga, or why we needed to go through all the stress, to begin with.

Or how come they never bothered to write single e-mail for an update until we filed a complaint to the Better Business Bureau? Nothing’s more wrong than leaving us in the dark with our questions still unanswered and our trust shattered.

(geemyko@gmail.com)