I would like to share the following personal experience which I had recently with Standard Chartered Bank Gambia.
The worst bank in Gambia is Standard Chartered Bank, they are liars and cheats and I speak from personal experience. This is a warning to help all those thinking of opening an account there. Go to Ecobank, you will get treated like a human and not a piece of crap.
Gambia is one of the nicest Countries in Africa and the people in general are great and helpful.
I looked at opening a bank account and checked several banks but I was recommended to open an account with SCB (Standard Chartered Bank) because they were all practically the same but SCB was British so maybe the influence would help.
This was the biggest mistake I made opening an account with them.
From the beginning around three or four years ago when I opened the account I wanted internet banking and I was told they were working on it and it would become available from January 2019. This was the first lye because it is still not available and what they did instead was to send out statements every day by email but only on the Dalasi account and not others.
Because of the COVID situation I was not able to go to Gambia and I wanted to take some money from the account, to my surprise I was told my account was inactive because I hadn't used it for a while but noone informed me and if I had internet banking access I would know automatically. So I did all the paperwork to reactivate my account and when I wanted to send by post I was told in Hungary where I am that there is no post to Gambia at the moment because of the COVID Pandemic so the only other choice I had was DHL which are using the Pandemic as an excuse to over charge and rob people. I contacted the bank and told them this but they were not interested and sai I had to send the documentation or go personally which was not possible on both counts.
To cut a long story short, the management was extremely arrogant and rude to me and have done nothing so as I wanted to close my account they are being difficult and this is completely unacceptable. It is not my fault there is a pandemic or that I cannot travel there and I don't want to get robbed by DHL.
SCB don't care if there is a pandemic or not and are not willing to be flexible even when they have all my information and have spoken to me personally by Whatsapp.
I advise anyone who wants to open an account with SCB in Gambia not to, open one with Ecobank and you will get treated with respect and have internet banking so you can control your own account.
J. Ferreira.
