In my line of work, I deal daily with invoices, account of statements, payments, receipts, payroll. I need to handle vendor's queries on non-payments, under or over payments etc..
There is this 1 incident that makes me fuming..It is normal to receive vendors' statement at month and then we have to reconcile the difference and the liasing with the vendor to resolve any discrepancy..
There was this particular invoice from MPA(The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore) charging us interest for an invoice that we had paid up and within their credit terms. So, I called them up, trying to resolve this problem.
The guy who picked up my call (Mr C) told me that they dun not entertain call in, asking me to write in instead., gave me the in charge's email and told me to write in requesting them to check. Luckily, I have certain experience dealing with government bodies, and thus, I requested for this email too, to keep him CC, in case the person who I should be dealing with did not respond to my query.
True to my prediction, they did not respond despite me sending reminders every 3 days( they need 3 days to response as stated in their auto reply mail, thus I waited for the dateline to be up before reminding them).
Its tiring to have to keep remembering to chase them for an answer, but still I keep on sending chaser as it is part of my duties. The most irritating part? They did not even bother to reply me, except for the auto reply.
I had already send so many emails/chaser to them, even if they had not investigate this matter, they can at least reply me to say that they are looking into this matter, but no, nothing, not a single reply from them at all..
The last stalk came when I received another interest charge this month, meaning to say not only they ignored my query, they continued to let the mistake carrying on, billing us the interest. I knew if I do not take any action, this thing will not get resolve anytime soon.
Their websites only stated the common email for us to send our queries to, but I've tried sending before and got no reply, so this time, I decided to write to their higher management, hoping to get the problem solved once and for all without me having to send chaser every 3 days and while having to explain to my management why we are being charged interest monthly. It seems like we are not doing our job in making sure payment is prompt.
The thing about complaining to the higher management (in this case the financial controller), the reply will come in faster than you say "chaser". Mr C who I found out is the manager of credit management, immediately replied me saying that the interest will be wavied within this week.
This Mr C, is all along being CCed in my mails and the chasers but then he chose to ignore me, also he was the one who insist me writing an email to them for the wavier.But he didnt take any action though he saw me asking time n again on this issue. Instead, the mintue I escalate this issue to his superior, he can emailed me bak saying that they can get it wavied within the wk even though he is on MC.
Why do you need me to blow up the issue before replying me? Should you have looked into wat I brought up in the 1st place, I would not have bring this to your superior to get you to work. I am utterly disappointed with the way the government sector employees work. I mean, we always claimed to have a world class system. Yet,with this encounter, had not been me who took the effort to went an extra mile to write in to the higher management, hoping to resolve this issue, it would have been left hanging there and my company will continue to recevie the interest charge every month.
This is the difference between private and public sector. 2 wks after this MPA issue, I got a statement from Raffles medical stating non-payment from us. I reconciled, and found that we have paid most of the mentioned invoice, others being not due for payment or non-receipt of the invoice. Wrote them an email, highlighting my concern, within half an hr, a staff called me back to liase with me on this issue.
I do not expect every 1 to be this efficient. Sometimes, we need time to go investigate the claims, but 1 month of no reply from them is realli my limit. It only goes to show how bad their attitude is. In my case, I am liable to answer to my superiors on the interest charged and therefore would make an extra effort to solve this problem.
We this kind of working attitude, I am sure we are going toward world class system, but is 3rd World...
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