I have been using the payback card for almost an year now. However, I never thought it was necessary to check the status on the Payback website and hence never paid attention to it.
So on August 9th I was surprised to see, that although I was swiping my card for every transaction at one of HPCL partners they claim to have partnered with, my points were not credited. This happened for almost 9 of the transactions for which I would have spend around 18000 INR. 2 of the 11 receipts that I had received directing that the points have been credited has been attached.
On Contacting the customer care, I was sent across several mails (for individual complaints), which clearly states the following (IN BOLD). We regret to inform you that transactions that exceeds 60 days cannot be processed by the partner, hence we are unable to take your issue forward. We request your kind cooperation in this regard.
We regret to inform you that we are unable to take up your complaint, as for any complaints regarding non credit of PAYBACK points customer needs to contact us within a timeframe of 60 days from the date of transaction made. Beyond this, our partner will not entertain customer’s complaint.
We would like to inform you that complaints relating to your earning of points can be registered within 60 days from the transaction date. As we see that this limit has already expired we will not be able to register a complaint for the same.
We regret to inform you that we are unable to take up your complaint as for any complaints regarding the non credit of the PAYBACK points, the customer needs to contact us with in a time frame of 60 days from the date of transaction made. Beyond this, we do not take up the customer’s complaint.
As you can notice, the last response was simply the best wherein they said THAT THEY DO NOT TAKE CONSUMER COMPLAINTS WHICH ARE FOR MORE THAN 60 DAYS DURATION. Only 1 transaction’s points are being credited out of the 11 complaints that I had sent across.
So basically had I not checked the website for my point status, I would have kept on wasting my money on earning useless points through this program. My concern is that if a payback partner is facing technical issues why I should I bear the brunt of it when I have all point receipts available. A receipt handed over should mean that the points have been credited.
NO other loyalty program in the industry expects you to check your point status. So Beware. If you do not check your status timely, you might just be getting duped.
UPDATE:
As per their customer care representative, it takes 60 days for crediting of points when the transactions are made through an online portal. I got to know this when I made a transaction through Jabong.com.
On the other hand their customer care replies that they do not ENTERTAIN CONSUMER COMPLAINTS BEYOND 60 DAYS! So if my transaction points for Jabong would not be credited, there is nobody I can question.
PAYBACK IS DEFINITELY A SCAM!