[Gansan]

I suppose you made this payment by cheque and it is adjusted against your outstanding balance?

[SX4LOVER]

ICICI bank has a history of such incidents...contact the banking ombudsman!

[mkh]

Well i for one have something good to say.
My wife's card got stolen and i reported the theft. Meanwhile there was a small transaction of Rs 270 that was done and i could trace the location and get the charge slip also. It had no sign.
I called the bank but they refused saying only after theft reported can they do anything.
I told them- how can you honor a transaction where charge slip has no customer sign? What else is the use of the charge slip and customer sign behind the card?
They said you need to file an FIR and send that copy, i told them that its not possible as the place was 300 kms away where it was stolen( we were outstation at that time on a trip)
After 3-4 times of exchange on emails, they issued a fraud credit asking me to send some letter etc which i never sent and i got the transaction void.
Small amount, small victory, but sometimes it works!

[pramodkumar]

Originally Posted by SX4LOVER

ICICI bank has a history of such incidents...contact the banking ombudsman!

Will not help, Credit card is a unsecure loan and there are very less regulations as the so called authorities are still in the process of understanding how it works. Going to the ombudsman will further complicate the matter.

adman77 i hope the over all outstanding would have come down. Arrange some money some how and pay off and cancel the card, if you do settelments this would screw your credit rating. Remember CBIL is still under their control and any idiot bank can screw your credit ratings and it will take you ages to clean it up. I completely understand the temptations and horror stories of credit cards. I would advise you to pay off and cancel the cards as this might affect you in future.

A real incedance where in my friend closed his PL which he took 8-9 years ago. He paid it off before time as he had some additional cash. They gave him a closure statement and after that they presented one cheque. This cheque got dishonoured. He escalated the matter and finally all his cheques were returned and letters were issued in favour of closing the loan. However after 4-5 years he sees cops coming to his house looking for him. A a case of cheating was registered on him by ICICI fro that dishonoured cheque. Luckly he had all the letters(i still admire his sense of order and document filing capabilities) he took a bail immediately, ofcourse it costed him money and finally when he spoke to his friends they said, ICICI ususally does this thinking its almost 5 years now and the customers must have lost all the supporting docs.

Look out of ever 10 of us 5 have a scarry story to narrate about ICICI, but does that stop us completely to boycott their products? Their loan processing and credit card processing is the easiest in the market, so everyone goes for it. Even today we all have something or the other from them, this is their strategy. We cannot completely boycott them, they are in this case, the necessary evil.


Pramod

[hemanthisgreat]

I guess, there is nothing much you can do. They have already got what they wanted and now trying to extract what more they can. Its best to settle the amount, if not they will only charge you late fees etc and harass you further. You should have asked them to get final settlement letter when they came to collect the cheque from you.

[adman77]

They asked me to pay by 6000 by cash immediately and the rest 6000 by cheque once I get the letter. But now they say that the 6000 i already paid got adjusted in interest and I need to pay everything else as there is no record of any settlement.

[Daewood]

There are a few organisations which have been started by small groups of lawyers to help people affected by the really high interest rates(sometimes upto 42%) of these card companies.

Do enquire about these outfits and they may be helpfull.

[ntomer]

A very interesting development.

I have filed a case with banking ombudsman, but got no response so forgot about it. Then one fine day I got a call from BO, telling me that they have fixed a meeting with ICICI and whether I will be able to attend that. I gave my consent.

But on the day of the meeting, I was busy in something else and couldn't go. I thought that those 8K are already gone and didn't bother about that.

But yesterday I noticed a credit in my account, and the amount was same which was deducted by ICICI. Looks like BO ruled in my favor and directed ICICI to return the money.

Looks like somethings do work in this country.

Cheers

Nitin

[nkapoor777]

Originally Posted by ntomer

A very interesting development.

I have filed a case with banking ombudsman, but got no response so forgot about it. Then one fine day I got a call from BO, telling me that they have fixed a meeting with ICICI and whether I will be able to attend that. I gave my consent.

But on the day of the meeting, I was busy in something else and couldn't go. I thought that those 8K are already gone and didn't bother about that.

But yesterday I noticed a credit in my account, and the amount was same which was deducted by ICICI. Looks like BO ruled in my favor and directed ICICI to return the money.

Looks like somethings do work in this country.

Cheers

Nitin

That's great Nitin. Congratulations! I hope more people stand up for their rights against these crooks and follow the redressal mechanisms in place.

[jinojohnt]

My Card: HSBC. My big mistake:
I gave consent for them to deduct the outstanding amount from my HSBC savings. I thought at least I need not bother about 'payment due date'.
First Incident:
First year was offered free. By around 10 months, I had accumulated 800 reward points. That time, I was not aware of the "I want to cancel my card if you do not give second year also free" trick. I asked the bank (in writing) to adjust my second year fees in the reward points. The bank (verbally) said yes. After 12 months, they promptly deducted 750 Rs from my Savings Account as yearly fees. I went to the Trivandrum Branch and asked them in writing (2 times) to revert this, but this never happened.

Second Incident:
My Card went missing on a Sunday, so I called their toll-free to block the card. I found the card after 2 hours (from under the brake pedal) and promptly called the toll-free again. They said "don't worry". I specifically asked them whether I need to give in writing not to block my card. They said they have already noted my conversation, so no need to worry.
I was not convinced, so I sent my dad with a letter to the Trivandrum Branch the next day (Monday). When dad gave my letter not to block the card and not to send a new card, the lady says "Oh sir, we had told your son yesterday not to worry, and that this letter is not needed. But since you have come with this letter, we'll keep it". (These guys are really connected to each other, they are most of the time acting like "I don't know about your interactions with the other department".)
Next month, they sent me a new replacement card, and charged 100 Rs in my next bill (again automatically deducted from my Savings account). I went to the Trivandrum Branch again and asked them in writing (2 times) to revert this, but this also never happened.

Third Incident:
Fed up with the above incidents, I decided to cancel my HSBC credit card. I went to the Trivandrum Branch again and requested in writing, but bills (with zero outstanding) kept on coming. I went to the branch three more times with letters, but nothing worked. Finally I wrote to the Chennai South zone head-office (with xerox of all my previous letters from incident 1 to 3) saying "Enough of your services, please give back my cash, just do me a favor by cancelling the card".
After 2 weeks, I got a letter from Chennai HSBC that my Credit Card stands cancelled. Phew!!
(No news about my cash, but I decided it was better to lose 850 Rs than to prolong my suffering.)

Fourth Incident:
After a month, I went to the Trivandrum Branch with a letter to cancel my Savings Account also (I was more worried about the credit card, so I had decided to cancel the Savings Account after cancelling the credit card). The executive won't let me write "Poor Service" in the column for "Reason for cancelling account"! After 5 minutes of "Sir, this will affect my appraisal" , I thought what the heck and wrote "Personal" in this column. At least he helped me close the Savings Account then and there itself.

Good bye to HSBC, for good.

Now I am on the look out for a Credit Card that will allow me to fix the shopping limit as 5000 Rs mainly because of the following reasons:
1. Debit cards may not be accepted for all shopping. Some internet shoppings require credit card.
2. Most of my shopping is done using cash or debit card, so I don't really need a 'higher limit credit card'. The lesser the limit, the lesser the risk (If my limit is 5000 Rs, I would not loose more than 5000 Rs even if there is an internet fraud, right?)

To my dismay, none of the Credit Card executives that I have met are able to assist me.

[sdp1975]

I can recall of a pleasant experience with StanChart several years ago.

One day I visited a pub on residency rd. Paid by card, and the very next day a fraudulent transaction was made - amount was around 3K or so. Maybe someone at the pub noted my card no.

When this came on my monthly bill , I called them up and they asked me to fax a dispute letter, which I did. I did not have to pay the amount as well.

This was about 8-9 yrs ago. BUt in general it's a rarity I guess to find a private bank that will do things properly.

I'm sure that the public banks will be better off and process oriented. I remember P Chidambaram stating once in the Lok Sabha ( when he was the FM ) - that if any PSU bank manager uses goons for recovery he will have him fired .

[ampere]

Once I booked train tickets, three four of them together (3-4 transactions).
I promptly got a call from Stanchart asking if I am the owner of the card and if I indeed carried out these transactions.

That I thought was good.

[thedreamcatcher]

Write in to some Business magazines like Business World etc and they at times follow up with the bank to get a response. When issues like this a printed and distributed over a million indians, the banks starts to wake up

[Raccoon]

Originally Posted by jinojohnt

1. Debit cards may not be accepted for all shopping. Some internet shoppings require credit card.

I have found HDFC debit card to work even where it was mentioned that only Credit Cards are expected. Don't know if it will work in all cases though. My experience regarding this is limited.

In some case if it does not work, or if you want additional security, you can use HDFC's Netsafe virtual credit cards. Unless you know already, they are virtual one time use cards for which you can select any limit for yourself. Work perfectly for me. Used them 3 - 4 times till now. You can generate one in just a few mins.

[Gansan]

Originally Posted by Raccoon

I have found HDFC debit card to work even where it was mentioned that only Credit Cards are expected. Don't know if it will work in all cases though. My experience regarding this is limited.

you can use HDFC's Netsafe virtual credit cards. they are virtual one time use cards for which you can select any limit for yourself. Work perfectly for me. You can generate one in just a few mins.

+1 to this. I always use this for my online transactions. Never ever use debit cards online.