[Resolved]  Standard Chartered Bank — Misguidance/Fooling customers who missed ECS on time

Address:

Mumbai City, Maharashtra

I have a personal loan(reference#[protected] from this bank since 15-Apr-2013(for 5years) and my ECS is scheduled on 15th every month from my HDFC account. Since I switched my company so I had to change my salary account from HDFC to Kotak. Kotak provides the service to schedule the NEFT payment and i opted to use this service rather than going for change in ECS clearing account. I started using this service and everything was fine till November'14 where in I did not check for the balances and expected that NEFT would go fine and it was failure. I missed notification from kotak for the same and i was not even remembering that ECS might have got bounced and this is where i came to know about the so called norms of SCB to fool/misguide the customers by appointing third-party vendors. Since I defaulted in payment on time, so I was liable for ECS bounce charges and i appreciated reminder when third-party person called on behalf of SCB mentioning that i have defaulted the payment. He mentioned that since I have defaulted, so I can pay the combined sum of EMI and bounce charges through sc.com and they can stop the re-presentation of ECS on my account if I provide them transaction number before next presentation date i.e. 23rd. I made payment(EMI15, 859 + Bounce charges 880) on 20th November'14 through bill desk suspecting that how can i trust if the person was officially authorised from bank. I was again called back by the person on 21st and i provided him the transaction reference number which obviously was safe thing for me to ensure that i am not providing anything which i should not do and at the same time prevent re-presentation if person is authorised personnel from bank. But to my bad, though this person was authorised from bank but he did not stop re-presentation and during representation 15, 859 were again deducted from my bank account moreover, my bank HDFC also charged me rs 393 as ECS bounce charge which make me feel more bad. On 26th November, i got a call from the same person and i yelled at him like anything that why did he give me false promise/misguided that he can stop presentation to which he apologised and said that he can arrange DD for me of the excess EMI paid/he can stop Decembers ECS to which i thought let it be since it was once in a while and i was anyway defaulter. But since then i thought i would ensure that i do not have to pay the bounce charges which for me were hefty (880SCB+400HDFC) and i cancelled scheduled payments of kotak. But again in february unfortunately i missed transferring EMI to my HDFC since i was out of station i again defaulted the ECS due to insufficient balance. Again the same thing the third party employee called mentioning i missed ECS and i can pay the EMI + bounce charges through bill desk same way i paid last time but this time since i was out of station tlll 18th so i could not pay it online and these third party were calling me everyday from 16 to 18 from different numbers and even i bared their calls as an alert for myself but this time I realised their cheapness and norms of SCB. On 19th February, I paid just my EMI amount rs15, 859 considering last time conversation with other person of option available from their side to collect bounce charges from home. On 20th the other person called me again which was 4th consecutive day and i told him that i have made payment through bill desk and helped him with transaction number of the payment under assumption that he would stop ECS re-presentation. I was waiting for the 23rd to get completed and if they stop re-presentation then i would pay them the bounce charges but as i expected they did not do this time also and I contacted customer care of SCB and of no help the customer care person said that to stop presentation/re-presentation i would have to visit branch and provide application for same mentioning the reason. I was very upset with the way i was treated and was feeling as if I am the culprit of their mis-communication. AFTERMATH!! SCB also deducted 841rs without my consent from my HDFC bank account with HDFC bank charging me 393 again. This doesn't even end here again they are calling me for bounce charges again and i fired them like anything. Now, I decided that i am not going to tolerate this anymore and would not receive any of the calls from SCB. BOUQUET OF DEPRECIATION !!! The third party and even the official customer care(starting with 0124) is calling me everyday before the banking hours 8.30am and 9.30am since then. I have been courteous enough to them now by not attending their calls. I have now decided that i am not going to pay them through ECS come what may be consequence, as in era of CUSTOMER FACILITATION they are actually creating CUSTOMER FRUSTRATION. I made a payment of EMI through Bill Desk only this month i.e. March 2015 and would continue the same way. Can't tolerate anymore frustration from them. Just to add something more. I had provided them with my personal email ID(for receiving alerts) while applying for personal loan but they still maintain my earlier organisations email as my primary email ID which they had maintained while providing me the credit card earlier(even with i had bad experience of similar kind and i closed that). I had called their customer care for updating the same after i missed EMI for first time and they said that i would have to fill form again and submit it in branch. Why would i do that for somebody else's mistake and that too when branch is too far from my place ? I had no intention of raising this as concern but wanted everyone to be aware of customer harrasmment techniques employed by SCB.