How I got cheated by Public Mutual Online (PMO) and their Customer Care does not care.

Sometime ago, I did lots of switches from equity funds to money-market funds, and back to equity funds. As we all know, the switching fee from equity to money-market is zero (after holding the equity funds for more than 90 days).

And from money-market to equity, it is RM25 per transaction, whether it is before or after the 90 days holding period.

I have an existing money-market fund; and all is good and fine when I switched out of several equity funds to this money-market fund. Then later on, I did a full switch (switching out all the units inside the money-market fund) to another equity fund.

So I was surprised when I was charged RM50, as the expected cost should be RM25 only.
When I checked the transacted details in PMO, it was shown that PMO broke the full switch transaction to 2 separate transactions – as some units were before 90 days, and some units were after 90 days, hence 2 separate transactions costing RM25 each.

Okay, my beef is that the full switch should be counted as a single transaction, since PMO presented the switching transaction as one transaction. The online screen do not show the available units in 2 portions, before and after 90 days. If it did, it would be understood that it could be treated as 2 transactions...

It is also understood that previously the fee before 90 days was different (RM50), and logically the system will have to do 2 separate calculations to get the correct fee. But the switching fee was changed to the same RM25 regardless of whether the units were before or after 90 days. So why break it down to 2 separate transactions?

Furthermore, as mentioned above, the online screen presented the switching transaction as ONE transaction. I was not informed it will be counted as 2 transactions when I pressed the confirm button. Otherwise, I would have split the transaction, and do another transaction on another day.

So I think it is justified that it should be counted as one transaction, and called customer service to waive the 2nd charge.  (I know, some of you are now LOL or even ROTFL.  )

So long story short, the Customer Service guy on the other end of the line was more or less repeating back to me what I had said and had known. The extra charge still remains... 

ifast dont sell public mutual

Yeah, the title of the post was purposely worded to grab attention. The more important point is in the first word, "How". The double charge will never occur again since we now know how the system calculates the transaction fees.

Will be having a wrap account when the time is right... I don't think it will be with investment platforms, as I'm leaning more towards direct interaction with fund houses. The portfolio must have 'cash distributions' and ease in transfer... as it's a 'forever' portfolio.