How to Dispute a Bank Charge in the UAE: Reading the Line Before You Raise the Complaint
TLDR: Most wrong-looking charges on a UAE statement are pre-authorisation holds, split settlements or foreign-currency amounts that posted days later. For the ones that really are errors, the Central Bank’s Consumer Protection Standards give the bank 2 complete business days to acknowledge the complaint in writing and issue a service request number, and after 15 calendar days without a resolution the case can go to Sanadak free of charge.
The line that sent me to my bank’s app last year read as a merchant name I had never seen, an amount 11 dirhams higher than the receipt in my wallet, and a posting date two days after I made the purchase. Three things looked wrong at once. None of them were. The descriptor belonged to the acquirer rather than the shop, the 11 dirhams was the card’s foreign-currency markup folded into the same figure, and the delay was the settlement cycle doing what it always does.
That non-dispute cost me twenty minutes. A real one costs a lot more when the complaint goes in badly, so the reading comes first.
Why most wrong-looking charges on a UAE statement are not errors
Five patterns account for the majority of what people flag:
Pre-authorisation holds. Hotels, car rentals and petrol pumps reserve an amount larger than the eventual bill. It sits as a pending item, then drops off and reappears at the correct figure. Two lines for one purchase, both real.
Split settlements. A restaurant that runs the bill and the tip separately, or an airline charging fare and baggage through different systems, generates two postings from one card tap.
Delayed foreign-currency postings. A purchase in another currency converts on the settlement date, not the purchase date, and the card’s markup is usually inside the converted figure rather than on its own line. A 300-dirham expectation lands as 312.40 with no visible fee.
Fees with their VAT separated. Bank charges frequently arrive as two entries dated month-end, the fee and its 5% VAT, carrying a reference that matches no transaction the account holder recognises.
Descriptor noise. Statement PDFs merge rows, mix Arabic and English, and print card references where a merchant name belongs. This is exactly why the statement importer I built into Masrofna keeps the raw descriptor string instead of a tidied-up merchant name: the raw string is the evidence.
Rule out those five before filing anything. What survives is worth the bank’s time and yours.
What the bank owes you once a complaint is filed
The Central Bank’s Consumer Protection Standards set the clock, not the branch. Complaints must be acknowledged in writing within 2 complete business days, and every complaint must be given a unique service request number to be used for tracking and escalation. The standards require resolution and a written final response within 10 business days, with a written explanation of any delay if that window passes.
The service request number is the load-bearing part. A conversation at a branch counter or a call that ends with “we will check and revert” is not a complaint in the regulatory sense, and it starts no clock. Filed in writing, tracked by number, dated: that is a complaint.
The evidence pack that actually gets a charge reversed
At the trading company where I work, invoice disputes get settled in a day or in a month, and the difference is almost never who is right. It is whether the other side has to go looking for anything.
The disputes that get reversed quickly are the ones where the agent handling the file has to do zero research.
Six items, in one message: the posting date and the value date, the descriptor string copied exactly as printed, the amount and currency, the service request number, the receipt or booking confirmation, and one sentence stating what was expected and what was charged. Nothing else. A paragraph of frustration adds handling time and removes nothing from the bill.
When a UAE bank complaint can be escalated to Sanadak
Sanadak is the independent ombudsman unit established by the Central Bank to handle consumer complaints against licensed financial institutions and insurance companies, free of charge. It is a second step, never a first one: the official government portal lists “Consumer didn’t wait 15 calendar days after the complaint had been raised with the LFI” among the reasons a case is rejected outright.
That waiting period used to be 30 days. In October 2025 Sanadak announced it had halved the response time for consumer complaints against licensed financial institutions to 15 working days, a change its chief executive Faiza Al Awadhi framed as a 50% improvement in turnaround.
Which means the practical sequence for any UAE charge dispute is short: read the line and eliminate the five patterns, file in writing and capture the service request number, send the six-item pack, wait out the 15 calendar days, then escalate if the answer never came or never made sense.
The part worth keeping is the first step. An account holder who can read a statement line correctly disputes three or four charges in a lifetime instead of thirty, and wins the ones that matter because the file arrives complete.