Credit Card AV VILLAS - What a bad experience!

- As is well known, AV VILLAS bank is part of the aval group, a large entity that has monopolized much of the country and Latin America. They are the owners of most of the banks in Colombia and their financial characteristics usually stand out for their high costs and few benefits to customers. At some point in my working life, the company I worked for used to have an agreement with Banco Av Villas to make payroll payments, so for ease, most employees opened their accounts with this bank.

  - That is how I ended up being a savings account holder but I did not last more than 2 months with it. The bank, or in this case the account, allowed me to make unlimited withdrawals but charged for any type of movement made with the card; balance inquiries, money deposits and everything that implied using my account, so I decided to cancel it, but the hard part was knowing that I had to go to a branch to do so; being there, I had to wait in line for 2 hours to pay a balance of $50 pesos or else I could not close the account. Really? no other more comfortable way to stay up to date?

- A couple of years later, the same bank called me to offer me a credit card with a pre-approved quota for $8'000.000 pesos and I thought it was interesting to accept it because I really wanted to contribute to my credit life. I was informed that I had to go to a branch to go through the process of validation and delivery of the cards, which seemed tiring but I decided to do it. The process took forever, I spent a whole morning at the bank and had to return 15 days later to pick up the card, what a tedious process!

- Unfortunately and as one more victim of crime in this country, my documents were stolen shortly after, I had to call the bank to make the respective cancellation and send the new plastic, card that never arrived, as much as I called and verified data the carrier reported that the data provided by the bank were incorrect and the address was not found. I tried for a month and a half and it could not be delivered so I decided to call the bank and cancel them but they could not cancel the information because I had to update data, what? the same data that I had been updating for more than a month? in the end, I had to go back to the bank branch and argue with the advisor because not even being there they did not accept my request. Only when they saw me really angry and about to make a big argument in front of other customers, they were able to enter the system and cancel the card.

      - A very bad experience, exhausting and tedious because in the 21st century, it is unbelievable that you still have to go through such an outdated process to receive a banking product, even when other banks have much more comfortable processes and easy access for customers.

Thanks for reading!