Mobile

So now you can pay for your Salik using your mobile. Whoopee.

I don't need that service, thanks to the Dubai e-government payment portal, which crashed last time I tried to pay my Salik, a couple of months ago. It blew out the transaction with an error message. I tried again, same result. I thought I'd give it a go at 'third time lucky' but it just came back again with a failure and error message.

Next day I had Dhs750 of Salik credit. The RTA blamed the e-government payment portal, the e-government people blamed Salik. Neither would contemplate (against the TOS, I believe, of Visa) a refund of the erroneously credited Dhs500. I sent email after email to the e-Pay people. Nada.

I also raised a complaint to HSBC Visa, who have been brilliantly silent on the matter since.

I remain a Salik millionaire. But I shudder to think what financial carnage could be achieved by the combination of RTA, Etisalat, e-Pay and HSBC, particularly bearing in mind that Etisalat will only discuss a billing problem once the bill has been settled and that the other three won't discuss a problem at all.

A confederacy of dunces indeed...