Details of letter sent to the bank in May 2022. I am yet to receive a satisfactory response.
To Whom it May Concern,
I write with great disappointment about my experience in requesting a loan from your bank and hope that my reporting of these events will be taken seriously so that these issues will be addressed. Even in saying so, I hold little hope that any change will result given how deplorable my experience was. I have been caused much distress by this incident and nothing you can do will give me back the precious time I lost in dealing with your employees’ incompetence and lack of respect. Frankly, it points to how poorly structured your services are, a truth masked by thoughtless bureaucracy and ineptitude.
To begin with, when I called your bank through a phone number I found on your website, the employee told me that HDFC’s loans were not available to non-residents. This should have been my first clue to how ill-informed your own staff are when it comes to your services. Then, in dealing with your Porvorim branch, despite assurances that I would receive the loan in a week, the entire process took a month during a time when I had little attention to spare given my professional commitments and the loss of my father. Yet, I was constantly harassed by employees for various forms, some already in their possession, because it was easier to pester me than actually question your institution’s arcane procedures.
To begin with, I was asked for a copy of my PAN card, a document your bank already has. It should be self-evident that I could not hold an account if your bank did not already have possession of this instrument. When questioned, the employee I dealt with said that their division didn’t have access to the document, even though it was clear that I had submitted it previously. I hope the ridiculousness of this is apparent to you.
I was then sent a list of documents to submit via email. My message to your bank bounced back several times because your service could not accept an email of the size I had dispatched. If you are going to request forms via email, the least you can do is ensure that your service can accommodate messages with multiple attachments. I then had to send each document via a separate email, which was an inordinate waste of time. After all this, the person I was dealing with at the Porvorim branch informed me that they hadn’t received a particular document. I pointed out to them that this allegedly “missing” document had not been included in the original list that was sent to me. The very fact that I was sent an email that was merely a listing of random documents rather than an official checklist underscores my observation that your employees are unaware of the procedures while it remains dubious whether there are actually set policies regarding what documents were needed. Again, it seemed like yet another attempt to harass me rather than assist me as a customer.
I also find it appalling that I was asked to provide the name of a co-applicant who was either my father or my wife. Why is your bank so insensitive? Is it your supposition that everyone is married and that everyone’s parents are alive? I do not even understand how something like this is legal because it is not only sexist and patriarchal but actually discriminatory. How can your bank automatically assume that any and everyone is married or that their parents are still alive? My father had just died, so your bank’s callousness was all the more aggrieving. I was then asked to provide the name of my sibling, but this is again very troubling. Not everyone has siblings and even if they did, why assume that one’s family members should stand as guarantors for a loan? These are further examples of the patriarchal biases of your institution and are forms of outright discrimination.
We were then told that someone from your bank would come by to verify our home address. When this occurred, the person sent was clearly trained very poorly. Their inability to communicate on the phone when asking for directions then resulted in a mix-up where they misreported matters to the loan department of your bank. The person in question, who spoke no English, made up the information that my sister was not resident at my parents’ home, causing a further delay in the provision of the loan. When I spoke to the Porvorim branch and the loan department, my family and I were repeatedly insulted. One manager actually said to us that it was impossible that my sister would be resident at her late father’s house because she was married. Can you conceive of how sexist and casteist this is? It speaks to your bank’s communalist attitudes and your caste and religious biases, issues that are actionable in court and which are also against the constitution.
When I complained to the manager of the Porvorim branch, his only response was that “I should write a letter” detailing the issues. This is a clear sign that he was uninterested in helping me and, to date, I have had no response from him, though he promised that he would look into these allegations as well as the unnecessary bureaucracy that my family and I were subjected to. I asked the manager why I should write a letter when he was listening to my complaint over the phone? Why should it be my job as the customer to have to write the very kind of letter I am doing so now? It is more than evident that your bank is keen on perpetuating its ineptness, for it is ever so easy to say that the customer “did not complain” when there is no paper trail to follow. Writing a letter like this takes time, but why should your bank care? You would rather discriminate against minorities and do nothing to change a system that does not work.
My sister, who is an asthmatic was forced – yes, forced (I do not use the term lightly) – to come into the bank to sign paperwork in the midst of a COVID wave. I asked the bank manager what he would do if my sister was infected on account of this, something that he neither cared about nor was able to respond to. I myself was forced to come into the bank to provide copies of the very documents I had already repeatedly sent because, purportedly, the copies I provided digitally were “unclear.” When the bank photocopied the materials I brought in, they looked no different from the virtual copies I had provided. This was not only a waste of time and resources, but coequally demonstrated to me that your staff are ill-trained and that your bank thrives on doing things meaninglessly.
When my loan was finally approved, my existing account was converted into a NRI account, something I was against especially because new cards were issued to me only after I left the country. The Porvorim manager said he had no choice in the matter and, in his own words, that even he “was unaware that this was a requirement.” When your own managers do not know about protocols or why they are followed, why would any customer believe that you have their best interests at heart?
Over and over again I was told, “but these are the procedures, ” a standard line that quickly revealed to me that, really, no one at the Porvorim branch, or at your bank generally, actually knew why they were doing the things they were doing. Is your institution of the belief that things have to be done for no reason other than to follow the dictates of an unquestioned system, one that makes the lives of your customers difficult? Does your institution really not understand that the only reason you exist is because you serve people, people whose hard-earned money makes your jobs possible? Procedures are only as good as the service they provide. When your staff are trained so poorly that they do not even know why they follow procedures and, indeed, often do not actually know the procedures, then you have to wonder in whose service your bank stands.
The discrimination I have experienced at your bank, the waste of my time, the ineptitude of your staff, and the ridiculousness of your procedures are issues that I expect to be addressed. If you write to me only to say “but this is how things are, ” please do not bother. If you write to me only to say you are sorry, please save me the further waste of time. I want to know what it is that you are going to do to change these practices. If no useful answer is forthcoming, I will take my business elsewhere once my loan is paid off for I do not need to support the services of an abusive institution.
HDFC Bank customer support has been notified about the posted complaint.
Verified Support
Jun 28, 2022
HDFC Bank Customer Care's response Dear Customer,
Thanks for writing to us. We are happy to help. Click on https://bit.ly/2Lzhyn3 to share the required details. Please mention reference number TT[protected] for us to promptly respond to you via email.
-Anay
HDFC Bank Customer Assistance
Jun 28, 2022
Updated by noite12 Anay,
You can very well respond to my complaint directly because, as my letter notes, I have already sent it to your bank and have not received a satisfactory reply.
Thanks for writing to us. We are happy to help. Click on https://bit.ly/2Lzhyn3 to share the required details. Please mention reference number TT[protected] for us to promptly respond to you via email.
-Anay
HDFC Bank Customer Assistance