[Resolved]  HDFC Bank — Unreasonable Credit card charges and harassment by the bank

Address:

Gurgaon, Haryana

I had purchases worth 40972/- in the month of Jan 2013, however due to an error on my part I paid 35992/-. In the bill of feb 2013, I was charged a finance amount of 1702/-. I placed many calls at the call centre and finally having got through to an executive I explained the issue. He helped me realize the shortfall of payment. The executive told me that the finance charges were levied on the entire outstanding bill amount. My argument was that the finance charges should be on the outstanding amount and not on the entire bill as that amount was not even due to the bank as yet. However I accepted my error and agreed to pay the shortfall amount of Rs 5000/-. I also made a request to reverse the late fee etc. The executive agreed and told me that he will put in a request.

However on seeing bills of the following months I saw that the finance charge and late fee charged was not reversed as promised and had now multiplied. I made repeated calls to the call center to resolve the issue but to no avail. Infact the reversal of finance charges requested in March was done in the month of July, however since then the amount had mounted and was much more than the amount reversed. The delay in processing the request by the bank has been penalized to me.

I continued to make repeated calls to the call center and tried to get this issue resolved. But all the calls led to no resolution and the amount has kept mounting since then. Since following up on phone calls was tedious and I had no record on my end, finally I resorted to writing emails to the grievance redressal since the month of June 2013 as well. The responses to my emails have taken up to two weeks or more and often have been incomplete without understanding the issue. I have sometime just been sent a set of statements with no information which has only led to loss of time again and again on the behalf of the bank.

On many occasions I have also written that the delay in response to my queries leads to overshooting of my payment date but all this is to no avail and the sense o[censored]rgency has been only on my end. On many occasions I received calls from people from the bank promising to resolve the issue but they never ever got back. I was given email id’s of supposedly senior people at the bank who rarely respond. Ofcourse not to mention the harassing calls made to me by the collection agents. It is difficult to get through the call center executives and sometimes require a waiting time of 20-25 mins. I have occasionally had to disconnect the call in frustration.

I have also had a visit from the recovery agent to my residence which in my understanding is unlawful.

I would also like to put on record that I have been a long time user of the HDFC credit card and have never had such an issue and because of my good payment history I regularly been upgraded in my credit limits etc. I have usually been a heavy user of my credit card and always been regular in making payments.
On this current issue I would like to mention that I have made a payment of every single rupee transaction I have made using the card. The only outstanding amount that shows up on the card is the mounting latefee and finance charges which are unreasonable as it due to the unresponsive or late responses on the part of the bank. Infact I have also paid the Rs 150/- transaction fee for redeeming my points as well as the last late fee in the month of Nov/Dec 2013.

Please help me regarding this issue.
Manisha Dua
email: [protected]@gmail.com