[Resolved]  HDFC Bank — Abusive behaviour

Dear Sir/ Madam
HDFC, in their office at Gillander House, 8 NS Road, have kept a girl by the name of Payal Sen for the credit cards division working as a telecaller. She doesn’t know how to talk to elderly people and goes to any means to harass them. This happened to me because I was late for only one min. pmt on my card and the amount was a trivial one of Rs2500. Moreover I am in Jaipur and mine is a Calcutta card and so there has been some irregularities in payments which I had earlier expressed. Till now they have not updated my address in spite of repeated reminders. I left Kolkata in February 07 and the first bill received by me was in May 08, despite umpteen faxes, e-mail, telephones, etc. I have been making payments just on the basis of their telephonic calls and they have been adding accrued interests every month, when actually I’m not using the card since the last 9-10 months. Anyway coming to the incident, regarding this one missed pmt. She harassed my father (age71) and my mom (age 66). They both were, traumatized by this, as they stay all alone in Kolkata. She said that your son is a thief. Doesn’t she have a mom or dad or does she behave like this with them too? Then this illiterate, disgusting woman calls me up and had the temerity to say that she would continue with this, and I couldn't stop her as I was in Jaipur. Her exact words were "What can you do from Jaipur? I'll continue to harass your parents!" How did she get an appointment in HDFC?

Doesn’t she know that RBI's guidelines state that recovery agents could not resort to "harassment of any kind, either verbal or physical, against any person in their debt collection efforts, including acts intended to humiliate publicly or intrude the privacy of the credit card holders' family members, referees and friends, making threatening and anonymous calls or making false and misleading representations."

Also, a bench comprising Justices Tarun Chatterjee and Dalveer Bhandari have said: "We deem it appropriate to remind the banks and other financial institutions that we live in a civilized country and are governed by the rule of law."

I want to know, what right the bank has to call members of my family and threaten them. I also want to know what crime have I committed defaulting on a bill, especially when the bank charges interest on late payments. Isn’t that penalty enough? This was the same bank, which had raised my credit limit from 20, 000 to 31, 000 without asking me and this was the same bank had told me to take up the utility payment scheme free of charge and then dutifully added charges for that to my bill. They can ask for payments every month but cannot implement change in address or cancellation o[censored]tility bill pmt. scheme.
She has done this with a lot of people earlier, but this time she has done it with someone who has been in the media industry for more than 10 years. I want to see this to the end so that others also do not face the same harassment. She can read about her misdeeds in the newspapers. Nobody can abuse anyone's parents and get off lightly.

Her name is Payal Sen. She sits at 1st Floor, Gillander House, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose road, Kolkata – 700001 and the number she called from was[protected]. I would request HDFC to recruit decent girls and not those who have only one professional qualification - "DIPLOMA IN HARASSMENT OF ELDERS & MASTER OF VERBAL ABUSE"!