I recently saw a couple charges on my BancoColombia account I wasnt familiar with.
2 charges for 27,140 to Cardif Protecion Integral.
After talking to my branch, it turned out it is a "Partner" of BancoColombia, that enrolled me without my previous knowledge, in an insurance policy that was supposedly for (IRONICALLY) " fraud Protection".
To make a long story short, we had to phone this company from the branch to discontinue the " policy". I spent 3 hours at the branch tryiing to do this but kept running into road blocks, the company kept hanging up,( at least 8 times) passing me from assesor to assesor, etc.
Finally, i got into the in the office of the branch manager, who.tried to help me. We phoned the subsiduary on a different line and I was able to get the " policy" cancelled..well at least thats what they told me..they gave me a " número de radicalizacion".
To make matters worse after I complained to the fellow at the Cardif subsiduary on the line how pizzed off I was the guy was still trying to convince me to..keep the account.
I told him no, who do you think I am? I didnt authorize you putting me on your account in the first place, nor did i authorize anyone to permit you to take money out of my account, I have zero confidence in your company ..dont you understand Spanish? no is no!
I passed the phone to the branch manager and she told him again I was really pizzed off with the situation..so please cancel the "policy"
Which suposedly they finally did.
I couldnt get a refund for the 54 mil they charged me , because suposedly that is a different process..I just hope they dont try anymore scams like this.
I dont know, but taking money out of a clients account via a 3rd party (whether a subsiduary or partner of the bank or not) without their consent and then making it extremely difficult to prevent this from happening in the future is pretty damn corrupt, isnt it?
Today I talked to a high earning Colombian, and he said they tried the exact same scam on him recently.
I imagine their idea is to try this with 2oo,ooo of their higher-end clients, hoping 10% wont notice. They can scam an a fair chunk of change that way..
If you have a Banco Colombia account, watch it like a hawk. Hay un gato encerrado...in other words..somehing is rotten in BancoColombia
