[pramodkumar]

There are some latest developments in this case, I received a mail from Axis bank with the correct ECS bouncing charges. I have sent the email to the SBT branch and they are yet to respond. As everyone discussed here, I am planning to pay axis bank the bounce charges as well so that my side is clear, getting a refund from SBT is a matter I would pursue separately, especially since axis bank is at no fault and they are in their right to ask for a ECS bouncing fee,

Originally Posted by Jaguar

You got calls from a collection agent for missing this months payment? I thought collection agents call only when there is a few months delay.
Anyways, IMO the best bet is to visit the loan branch and speak to some senior official who has the power to reverse the fees. If you have some proof of the SBT outage, you could attach it along with a strongly worded letter asking for fee reversal.

Personally I wouldn't worry too much about the CIBIL part. If you pay the EMI, it should be fine.

Actually I got my first call on the 7th, 5th is my EMI date and 6th being a Monday they called me as soon as they could, I am not surprised by this since every bank now has a very high degree of automation now and any default goes immediately into recovery. This is the very same reason I am little worried about the CIBIL part, I am planning to buy a new car sometime later this year/next year beginning and I want to get the best possible deals then and I don't want to loose out any offers due to a bad credit health. To just give you a small idea of the gravity of the issue was, one guy gave another guys reference(not guarantee but reference) to HDFC bank, the guy who took the loan defaulted and the other guys salary account was frozen by HDFC and they only released after he went with a complain with the Banking ombudsman, even the company HR didn't help him a all. This was in 2009 don't know the situation today.

Pramod

[raghu.t.k]

Originally Posted by pramodkumar

Do you know the procedure, in order to check don't I have to pay for getting the report?



I too felt the ombudsman as the right place to reachout to, but was sceptical about the time taken for resolution.
....

Yep you need to pay. I believe, it goes there after all modes of redressal is over. In any case if there is an issue, you could write to them with proof, which should be based on the communication from SBT.

[pramodkumar]

Update on this issue, I have made a payment to Axis Bank and I got a conformation SMS that its credited in my account on Saturday last week, However I am still getting calls from the IVR as well as their collection department .

I believe it would take a day or two for this to stop. In other developments I sent a mail to SBT which was forwarded mail from AXIS with their charges mentioned, this was sent on Friday morning, however I didn't get any reply from them till Saturday afternoon, I sent them a reminder to send me an acknowledgement, which they did and it said the concern is raised with their ECS clearing center which will take the matter further, now the wait begins.

Pramod

[manduvindupondu]

Hi Pramod,
I feel bad for the incident. I suggest the following

1) Send an email to Axis Bank Nodal officer, SBT Head office and with Banking Ombudsman in cc (The email is bohyderabad@rbi.org.in for TS and AP ; you can similarly find for your state) Worst case, send it to Hyd then they will route it to correct Banking Ombudsman office

2) Raise a complaint with Banking Ombudsman at the link "https://secweb.rbi.org.in/BO/precompltindex.htm" . They respond within 5 working days. Yes, I am stating from multiple experiences.

3) Post a tweet by ". @AxisBank" and/or SBT (Not sure if they have Twitter or follow it). Yes, the method is to type "dot space @Person name" . what this does is it will be made public and will be visible to all , it will be posted on ALL your followers on Twitter . MOST good banks ACT on Twitter negative remarks. Saying this by experience.

4) File a case with Consumer court as per the CORRECT jurisdiction. It works, the judgement is out in 3-6 months.


PS: I advised all the above by experience with various Sarkari banks (Gov as major shareholder) and it WORKED.
I spent 15 minutes of my time, hope it helps you and will be happy if you get a solution quickly.

I believe in "Dharmo Rakshati Rakshitaha"
Thanks.

Originally Posted by pramodkumar

I am not sure if there is an already existing thread on this topic, if yes mods kindly feel free to merge it to the existing thread.

I have a personal Loan with Axis bank and I have been regularly paying my EMIs for almost 6 Months now, It goes via an ECS on the 5th of every month, this month 5th was a Sunday and naturally I assumed it would get cleared on Monday or Tuesday. It goes from my salary account with SBT(state bank of Travancore) and I came to know that AXIS bank was unable to get the ECS cleared due to some technical glitch at SBT which had affected 1000s of customers across india, this was on the 5th is what I came to know. Now the collection agent called me and asked me to maintain the funds in the account till the 15th since they will retry the clearing once again. It didn't get cleared on the 15th and now I got a call saying oi have to pay the bouncing charges along with doing a manual payment. I don't mind taking the effort to go to the axis bank 10KMs away from home on a Saturday however I feel not obligated to pay the bounce charges since I am not at fault.

I spoke to the manager at SBT and she asked me to send them an email, which I don't feel would bring any results, I am certain that this would go into my CIBIL record, but I feel really sad as to why a consumer suffer for some fault which was not at all his.

I want to know the obligation SBT has towards such incidence cause the failure at their end is causing me money and there are mounting penalties and penalties on penalties if we don't pay the bouncing charges. I don't feel axis bank is at fault here however since ECS doesn't incur any handling charges(like a cheque) I feel their fine of 550 is too high.

What are my options?

PS I have already sent a mail to axis bank asking them to provide me in writing the charges incurred, which I am planning to forward to SBT for further action.

Pramod

[manduvindupondu]

Thanks for the suggestions ; will pursue them. I guess DBS Digibank suits my requirements and my mindset.

With regard to the Sarkari banks (Government of India as major shareholder) , I had multiple issues with them (Vijaya Bank, Allahabad bank, Indian Overseas Bank) over the last 10 years. Closed all of them.
Of course, I have SBI and am happy with them. Hope they maintain the online features.
Any other good Sarkari banks' suggestions are welcome
With regard to the technology, I believe SBI embraced technology well among the PSU banks. Others are still in stone age. (IOB insists you to go to HOME branch for withdrawal of FD after maturity!) No wonder, they are in losses. :-)

So I believe its better to take loan from Sarkari Banks but keep our hard earned money at trusted Private sector banks. (Anyway, in ALL licensed banks INR 1 Lakh is insured under DICGC)

Originally Posted by vrprabhu

Wow! Looks like you read the future correctly. BMB (Bharatiya Mahila Bank) is being merged with SBI - that's the news given SBI CMD a couple of weeks ago. Don't know when it will happen.



Among Private Sector Banks, as suggested by someone else earlier, Karur Vysya Bank Ltd. is offering one of the best technology oriented services. Don't know about their charges. Federal Bank Ltd. is also good.

Don't think that any Foreign Bank will permit a 'Low Minimum Balance' facility - they will extract their pound of flesh one way or other!

Any reason why you are not keen on Public Sector Banks? Some of them have very good banking services - both net banking and mobile banking at par with the best in the industry, and provide decent service (you will get more personalised service if you are able to build some rapport with the branch staff!)

BTW, make sure you get a EMV (chip based) ATM cum DEBIT card - more secure as they are difficult to skim / clone.

[BaCkSeAtDrIVeR]

Issuing an ECS mandate to bank A to ask money from bank B means bank A asks bank B to pay up on the mandate date. If bank B does not honour the ECS request, in spite of clear funds available, there is a serious breach of trust you posed in Bank B. It is Bank B's fault.

BTW, which branch of SBT?

[concorde24]

Any feedback on RBL bank (Ratnakar)? I was checking on FD rates today and RBL seems to offer the highest at 8.5% followed by IDFC bank at 8.25% among the bank FDs for non-senior citizen.

I was checking the older comments and there have been some positive comments on IDFC bank. But IDFC website indicates Rs.25000 minimum balance for the SB account. RBL is offering higher interest rate for SB account as well with 5K minimum balance and hence the question. Thanks!

[hserus]

Smaller private bank. Greater chance of simply going under one fine day, along with your deposits.

Higher risk, higher return - but if you want that level of risk I can suggest several good mutual funds.

Originally Posted by concorde24

Any feedback on RBL bank (Ratnakar)? I was checking on FD rates today and RBL seems to offer the highest at 8.5% followed by IDFC bank at 8.25% among the bank FDs for non-senior citizen.

I was checking the older comments and there have been some positive comments on IDFC bank. But IDFC website indicates Rs.25000 minimum balance for the SB account. RBL is offering higher interest rate for SB account as well with 5K minimum balance and hence the question. Thanks!

[condor]

Originally Posted by concorde24

Any feedback on RBL bank (Ratnakar)? I was checking on FD rates today and RBL seems to offer the highest at 8.5% followed by IDFC bank at 8.25% among the bank FDs for non-senior citizen.

RBL is going public, now. Does it reduce the risk, vis-a-vis other co-op banks ?

[hserus]

Originally Posted by condor

RBL is going public, now. Does it reduce the risk, vis-a-vis other co-op banks ?

It just means they are trying to raise money from the general public. A lot of this bank's operations are in the sugar belt of maharashtra, which is a region that is rather notorious for banks going under due to mismanagement of the loan portfolio. [see pic attached, a google maps overlay from their website's branch locator]

However, it seems to be a cut above most other such banks because of the heavy investments in people and processes that they're making in technology, risk management etc (they have some pretty good people in that area, I've met one or two occasionally).

I assume that is what is causing them to raise funds from the market.

It will probably ensure they remain a going concern and/or an attractive target for M&A by a larger bank, but that is in the much longer term.

A lot of analysts seem to be ok with this but in the short to medium term you aren't likely to get much return. Longer term - if their bets pay off, this should fetch decent returns.

Personally for me the kicker here is, as in my earlier post on this, that the risk doesn't make it worth my investing directly in this.

If one of the small to mid cap mutual funds I invest in pick it up, I won't complain - but I am not looking to become a direct investor in this scrip.

[concorde24]

Originally Posted by concorde24

I was checking the older comments and there have been some positive comments on IDFC bank. But IDFC website indicates Rs.25000 minimum balance for the SB account.

Correction from my previous post - IDFC mandates Rs.25K for opening account only but does not has any penalty for non maintenance of minimum balance. But there are some services like DD/ATM related which are otherwise free will be charged nominally.

[manduvindupondu]

Originally Posted by concorde24

Correction from my previous post - IDFC mandates Rs.25K for opening account only but does not has any penalty for non maintenance of minimum balance. But there are some services like DD/ATM related which are otherwise free will be charged nominally.

Yes, though they may offer many benefits initially, be aware they may discontinue it once they gain mass. Like what IDBI did in 2014. They discontinued ALL their FREE services in 2014; which were launched with LOT of fanfare in 2010. So I closed IDBI Bank account last year.
See if the account opening and closure is not much of a problem. (Paperwork, time, effort, tracking etc)
If you ask me, I will open with IDFC, enjoy the higher interest rate while it lasts and then close the account when they remove the deal sweeteners.
I personally like DBS Digibank, will open an account with them once I am in India.

[klassics45]

DBS Digibank looks to be a good secondary account. Only downside is, you cant deposit cheques.

Btw, Which Bank has the best mobile app now? Iam using Axis and DBS apps which are good but never tried any other banks yet.

[narayan]

Originally Posted by klassics45

DBS Digibank looks to be a good secondary account. Only downside is, you cant deposit cheques.

Btw, Which Bank has the best mobile app now? Iam using Axis and DBS apps which are good but never tried any other banks yet.

I have a Kotak a/c and find their app very easy and convenient. Also have a Citi account. Would rate the Kotak app better

[manduvindupondu]

Originally Posted by klassics45

DBS Digibank looks to be a good secondary account. Only downside is, you cant deposit cheques.

Btw, Which Bank has the best mobile app now? Iam using Axis and DBS apps which are good but never tried any other banks yet.

@klassics45, I am really keen on DBS Digibank "App-only" bank account. Is it 1) Open the Digi wallet 2) Go to any Coffee Day and give finger print, Aadhar card photocopy 3) Deposit some amount online 4) Your Savings account is open.
Is that it? Are there any surprises, hidden rules , clauses , restrictions?
I am fine without cheque book.