ABL Reviews 27

I never thought I’d write this, but my experience has been so appalling that I feel it’s my duty to warn anyone considering coming to Pakistan. What the media says about the lack of professionalism, respect, and humanity in this country? It’s all TRUE.

As a foreign student, I came to Pakistan with hope and excitement to pursue my studies, but one particular experience shattered any faith I had in this country: opening a bank account. Let me tell you, it’s been the most degrading and infuriating experience of my life.

At first, they were happy to take 5000 rupees from me, promising that everything would be smooth and quick. That was the first lie. For two months, I’ve been treated like garbage—ignored, mocked, and left to suffer at the hands of their rude, lazy, and utterly incompetent staff.

Here’s how this nightmare unfolded:

1. They made me come back to the branch over and over again, wasting my time, energy, and money. I’ve spent more on transportation trying to deal with these people than I have in my bank account.

2. Calls? Emails? Messages? All ignored. It’s as if they don’t care about foreigners once they’ve taken your money.

3. I was openly disrespected by their staff. They laughed at me in their language, thinking I wouldn’t understand. They treated local customers like kings while I sat there, invisible, waiting for hours without any help.

4. After finally getting my ATM card and cheque book after months of waiting, they refused to help me with basic app registration. One employee literally walked away from me, leaving me sitting there humiliated.

I missed classes, meals, and prayers trying to sort out their mess. I’ve never felt so small and unwelcome in my life. I thought Pakistan was a place of hospitality and respect. I was wrong.

This experience has shown me the truth about how foreigners are treated here: with zero care or dignity. If you’re a student or traveler thinking of coming here, DON’T. You will regret it. You’ll lose your time, your money, and your mental peace.

To the people running this system: shame on you for treating guests in your country this way. Shame on you for destroying someone’s trust in a nation. I’m counting the days until I can leave this place, and I will never recommend it to anyone.

If you value your self-respect and sanity, stay far, far away.

they put hold on my amount in bank in November 2023,
i submitted all the payment proofs and submitted written instances also but till today on 25 oct 2024 my amount is still on hold!
staff in bank and help line + support email knows nothing about how to unblock the amount.

even one of the employee BOM in bank branch 0285 named muneeb, said me that forgot the amount asap because it is not possible to remove hold.

WORST BANK !!!!

One of the worst banking app as compared to their counterparts. Most of the time not receiving one time password timely and sometimes can not make the transaction without any reason whilist u can do the same transaction through other banking apps without a hassle.

Pathetic service, Server always down and worst experience I ever had with this Bank

The app is consistently down, making smooth transactions impossible. There are always new issues with the app, reflecting poorly on the bank's service quality. It's disappointing to experience such a subpar app from a bank.

The only saving grace I have seen about Allied Bank is that some of the staff in the branches (often the female staff) actually go the extra mile to help when things go wrong. And they seem to go wrong at EVERY step in the process of opening an account and then in trying to transfer funds from the UK into the account, and then in trying to login to the website on a PC, where the web programmers don't seem to understand that if customers use a smartphone they would just use the myABL app, so if they are logging in to the website, they are likely to be on a PC and PCs don't receive One Time Passwords, so the user will try to type the OTP after it arrives at the phone. The website seems to be trying to autofill the OTP field from an SMS message that can never arrive on the PC.

So if you want a pdf statement filed away on your pc, I found you have to download it via the smartphone app, then when the pdf is open in Word you find it cannot be saved to some known location where you can transfer it via usb, instead you have to share it. I tried sharing to whatsapp, but that still didn't let me find a copy on the file system, so then I shared it via Gmail, and finally I could download a copy on the PC. What should be a five minute task becomes over an hour when you factor in all the wasted time trying to talk to the helpline to solve the problem.

The next joke is, that the statement fails to include any reference number or description of payments you make, eg if I pay a physiotherapist using the app, it lets me enter a description of the purpose of the payment, but their system is just too stupid to include that in the statement, so good luck trying to remember why you paid Acme Inc 3500 rupees in the middle of last month. This must be appreciated by anyone that wants to fraudulently take money out of your account, of course....

I am told that most banks in pakistan suffer similar problems so maybe it is unfair to pick on ABL but it is the only bank I have had recent experience with. For the time being.

Some of the helpline staff seem to hang up on me if the question seems to difficult to answer. Others seem very helpful while I am talking to them but afterwards when I try to follow the advice given I find out that it was useless advice. The 'Remittance' department which deals with incoming funds from international transfers, seems not to pick up the phone 95% of the time, and the other 5% of the time I have experienced either they hang up immediately or they don't understand what they are doing - one of them asked me for the reference number that I told him I was given by the sending bank, and when I read it out to him, half way through he stopped me and said, that's not an account number... so instead of 2-4 days, a standard international transfer arrives here in 8 days.

I expect the first decent international bank that opens a telephone / internet branch in pakistan will eat up market share like hot cakes.