Recently I had to go through some shit because I had agreed to some telemarketing call sometime during 2007-2008. I had taken a HSBC Gold Credit Card. Things seemed fine till date except some glitches last year. Although I enjoyed the reward points from HSBC.
Last year I happened to see that I had been charged with INR 3000 plus service charges as annual fee (INR 2000 for the primary card and INR 1000 for the add-on card) in my HSBC credit card statement. I called up the customer care and asked the phone banking executive as to why this amount was being charged. He told me that it was done in accordance with the banks policy.
I had the following questions thrown at the phone banking executive
Q1) why was I not being charged with annual fee all these years? All of a sudden I see these charges. I had not received any communication from the bank indicating the changes.
A1) Sir, sometimes bank do give a waiver on annual fee. But it is not mandatory to give it to every customer.
Q2) When there are many other banks which are throwing free credit cards at customers, why do you think anyone would want to have an HSBC card by paying an annual fee ?A2) Yes sir. But this is as per bank policy. However I can raise a case and have the Annual fee charges removed. Also I will convert your card to a lifetime free credit card.
Year 2009 passed. In 2010, the same incident repeated. However with a small twist. The Annual fee on my primary credit card was waived automatically whereas the fee on my add-on card was not.I called up the customer care asking them to waive the Annual fee as my card was a life time free credit card. I narrated the entire story to the phone banking executive.
But to my surprise, this time the Customer care was quite blunt on me and told me that there was nothing he could do this time. I told him that the card is a life time free card, to which he responded that my add-on card was not a lifetime free card.
I told him that I will not make the payment no matter what. This is “day-light robbery”
I asked him to tell me what I was supposed to do to avoid the annual fee. He told me just cancel the add-on card , then I will not have to pay the annual fee,
I agreed and asked him to cancel the card.
Now my mind started thinking in a different direction altogether. I had the following questions bothering me
1) why should we be at the banks mercy for such incidents.
2) Banks are cheating customers in broad day light !
3) What should I do to not fall victim to such cheap behaviour from a reputed Multi-national bank ?
Just recently I had read about the RBI Ombudsman. I had checked out the website as well.
I decided to go ahead and lodge a complaint against HSBC with the Ombudsman.
Within days of registering the complaint, I received a letter from HSBC along with the copy of the Application form that I had signed years ago!
Now came the actual surprise!. I was shocked to see a reputed Bank like HSBC making false claims in the letter addressed to me.
I was totally pissed off with this communication from HSBC. I had made up my mind that banks cannot dictate terms with Customers as per their whims and fancies.
I was thinking on how to go about this incident. I received a letter and an email from the RBI Ombudsman indicating the complaint had been addressed.
Now I started getting really suspicious, that HSBC had just tried to get away with the complaint by formally addressing the case...Just for the heck of formality.
The letter addressed to me stated that some one from HSBC had spoken to me on this matter! That was the first false statement in the first paragraph of the letter.
The letter also mentioned that they (HSBC) had exceptionally converted the primary card to a life time free card sometime in August 2008 based on my representation with the Phone Banking Executive. Also they mentioned that as a service gesture they were reversing the annual fee and both the primary and the add-on card was closed!!!
I now realized that just recently when I tried using my credit card, it didn’t work. The card was declined
This pissed me off big time and I registered another complaint with the RBI ombudsman, I also mailed HSBC customer care informing them that the letter addressed to me was not based on actual facts and if they didn’t bother to address this fairly, then I would have to take the legal path to get this issue sorted out. If the primary card fee is reversed and when i as a customer know the fact that the primary card was converted to a life time free credit card, why would i want to cancel it ? (unless i had other reasons)
After this they realized that they had not dealt with the issue professionally and someone from HSBC got in touch with me. I told them that it was not a joke to issue a credit card and cancel it as per their wish! The bank has no right in cancelling the card unless you have not paid your credit card due on time!
Finally the bank got my card reinstated...Linked the existing credit card account to the new card issued! They finally Acknowledged that the bank had both the card closed though the request was placed only for the add-on card cancellation.
I did not want to allow these institutions to dictate terms or manipulate the situation!
