When Nitin Bhoria received a letter from Touch ’n Go Sdn Bhd (TNGSB) in December last year detailing several problematic transactions, he immediately became concerned.

As an owner of a Touch ’n Go Zing card, his Touch ’n Go card is supposed to automatically reload RM100 whenever the balance is low, which will then be charged to his linked credit card.

However, according to the letter he received, the company informed him that there were eight instances of auto reload which were not charged to his credit card and that they have charged him for those transactions accordingly.

“I got suspicious, because first of all, it’s their fault.

"Why are they not charging the transactions (properly)?

“I could only check my credit card statements for the last few months (online), but I found out that they were charged (before),” Nitin (above) told Malaysiakini.

He eventually discovered that up to RM1,800 had been on his credit card as Touch ’n Go transactions, but none of that amount had been added to his Touch ’n Go card balance.

After several months of sorting this out with the company, he said they finally offered him a Touch ’n Go card with a reload value of RM200 as an apology and in exchange for an assurance that Nitin would not take legal action against them.

In the settlement letter sighted by Malaysiakini, Touch ’n Go said that they offered the card worth RM200 with hopes that Nitin would “amicably agree not to hold TNGSB, its agents, employees, officers, directors and affiliates liable for any damage, suits, and/or claims arising from the matter including and without limitation to any liabilities arising in connection with the conduct, act or omission of TNGSB, its agents, employees, officers, directors and affiliates”.

Nitin said he was unhappy with this settlement as he wanted a much higher compensation for the trouble he went through, with his time, effort and money wasted.

He spent close to six months dealing with the company before he received any sort of closure on this issue, he said.

“As a customer, I wasted six months on this and at every step, I had to fight against them and show them that this is wrong,” he said.

Five duplicate charges refunded

First, he had to deal with the letter that was sent to him back in December, regarding the eight transactions.

As he did not have access to a complete record of his credit card statements online, he could only prove that five of the charges from Touch ’n Go were duplicate charges, by cross-referencing the transactions on both his credit card statements and his Touch ’n Go reload history available online.

After about a month of being passed around different departments of the company, Nitin said someone from Touch ’n Go finally got back to him and admitted that those five transactions had indeed been charged to his credit card previously.

They did refund the RM500 duplicate charges, but Nitin’s suspicions only grew, especially when they informed him that this was a result of a technical glitch.

“I lost my trust in dealing with Touch ’n Go so far,” he said.

Another 18 duplicate charges

So Nitin requested his bank for his credit card statements for the past year and laboriously cross-checked the transactions again with his Touch ’n Go reload history.

After his own investigations, he found another 18 duplicate charges to his credit card from Touch ’n Go, where the same reload transaction was charged more than once.

“I wasn’t so mad when they reversed the five transactions, but when I found the other 18 transactions, I said, ‘look, I have had enough’,” he said.

But when he informed Touch ’n Go of these extra erroneous charges, he said it took them another few months of “passing the ball around” even as they kept telling him that they were investigating the matter.

Finally, he said, Touch ’n Go came back to him and admitted that its probe revealed that there were 19 duplicate transactions charged to his credit card, including the five which it had earlier refunded.

“Upon further investigation, we found 19 duplicate transactions were charged to your credit card account in 2015 and 2016 inclusive of five transactions that was refunded to you in March 2016.

“Touch ’n Go will process refund for the 14 duplicate transactions via your credit card within two weeks,” one of the e-mails from Touch ’n Go to Nitin read.

They also informed him that their internal probes showed that the other charges which he claimed to be duplicate were actually genuine charges.

From this, Nitin received a refund of another RM1,320.67 from Touch ‘n Go, for a total refund of just slightly over RM1,800.

Unsatisfied with customer service

Despite the fact that he was refunded the money, he remains deeply unsatisfied over their customer service.

“I honestly would not expect companies like Touch ’n Go to be so poor in helping a customer. The least you could do is help and investigate.

“It’s very clear in my e-mails that I have been waiting and waiting, full of frustration. I had to do the job that they were supposed to do,” he complained.

He added that throughout the entire time, Touch ’n Go continued to insist that this was a system glitch.

“A system glitch could affect a lot of users,” he said.

Nitin also said that he intends to terminate his Touch ’n Go Zing account, but addded that he cannot stop using Touch ’n Go completely as it has become almost essential for people living in the Klang Valley.

System glitch fixed

Meanwhile, Touch ’n Go apologised again and explained that this incident happened due to a system glitch that occurred during its system migration last year.

The system migration had resulted in a delay in charging the auto reload transaction to its customers’ credit card accounts and so, some of these transactions had become duplicate charges, the company said.

“We have taken proper action by working closely with the related financial institution to make full recovery and at the same time those duplicate charges have been refunded accordingly to the affected customer,” said Touch ’n Go chief executive officer Syahrunizam Samsudin, when contacted by Malaysiakini.

He assured that the system glitch has been fixed and that its Touch ’n Go Zing card services will no longer be affected.

The revelation of this incident comes a few weeks after a Touch ’n Go user said he was charged many times more than the usual toll fare when passing through a toll booth.

A Facebook user, who identified himself as ‘Sai Yew Lee’, said that while he was travelling from Jalan Duta to Rawang Selatan on June 1, he noticed that the stored value in his card had dropped from over RM100 to over RM50 as he was passing through the exit toll booth.

Syahrunizam had also apologised for this incident, assuring that it was an “anomaly” and that both Touch ’n Go and the highway concessionaire Plus Malaysia Bhd were working to improve their services.