I thought it was time I bring to light the traumatic experience that I had with the Niyo SBM Visa Card. I had received the card a few days before I left for UK. I thought it wise to check the card before I left India and tried it for an online purchase from a Manchester store to be delivered at my UK address. The payment could not be set up as the card seemed to have a problem. It alarmed me and I informed the Niyo Customer Services. Simultaneously, I disabled and re-enabled the " International", " Online" and âATMâ functions of the card several times. I tried multiple times, but the payments continued to fail. The Customer Services was clearly at sea to diagnose the problem and merely asked me to copy the âDeclinedâ page to it which I promptly did, but no solution came. I left for UK with the hope that it was a mere aberration and things would be fine at UK. At the UK airport, the card got registered with Uber, but failed to make the payment at the end of the journey! It was extremely embarrassing to face a situation like that as the Uber driver was not willing to accept cash. I immediately reported this to Niyo Customer Services. Their suggested recommendation was what I had done already. That was to disable and re-enable the functions! I was
also asked to copy the âDeclinedâ page to Customer Services! Subsequently, I tried the card with two different super stores and it failed everywhere. Everytime I had adequate balance for the transactions! I faithfully informed the Customer Servics with the details of the failed transactions and copied the screenshots. I was then asked by Customer Services to try it on an ATM machine. I was on self isolation and couldnât do it for some time. Subsequently, when it was tried on two ATM machines, it again failed both times. I immediately reported but the clueless Customer Services stopped responding. I appealed to them for help as I was stuck in a foreign country simply because I had trusted the card, but they simply went silent. I requested them to send a fresh card to my UK address, a request they simply ignored. Fortunately, I had carried an old ICICi debit card with me which saved me from absolute disaster. The Niyo Customer Services simply washed off their hands and never communicated back to me.
I am posting this to caution everyone and to take lessons from my harrowing experience! Donât depend on this card solely and if the card fails, you will be left in lurch in a foreign country and the amateurish Niyo will be seen nowhere!
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