Here’s another tale of how a bank’s process and it’s followers play with people’s emotions and cause them immense trauma and pain and stress.

Given the limited care that the society provides to Sr. citizens in our country, assume that given the fracturing nature of our society, when kids go and live away from their parents, and parents are forced to live on their own, the pain and stress they have to go through when the systems around them - banks, post offices, hospitals, infrastructure etc. are not at all helpful for them in any way and they have to still survive somehow.. taking all the risks that come with being on their own in cities, and having to go to all places on their own and doing all the things themselves…

imagine then also the state that with time, the mental makeup of somme of them starts to wither away. Some old people get low in confidence, low is self esteem and begin to in a way ‘give up’ on their daily chores which probably they used to be very good at doing regularly in earlier times.

So if such a person is writing cheques and given that in later times of life, the handwriting becomes a little unsteady, and people become a little unsure, if banks didn’t have a proper process in place, to ensure that the rights and facilities for such people are in place, the stress the individual will face if the person, though is doing everything right, yet, the system penalises him/her.. because someone did a mistake and the customer, who is a Sr. Citizen now has to pay the penalty for it.

So here’s a case let’s say happened in my family. My dad pays his municipal taxes through cheque payment. he writes 2 cheques. on one he has done the job well, no errors. on the other cheque there is a number overwrite, a letter overwrite which he promptly countersigns.

now in such a situation, a person would actually have some amount of small doubt whether the cheque will get accepted or not so he would double check it and ensure that everything has been countersigned correctly.. how much ever there is that low confidence level that there could be an error.

so these cheques get presented in the bank by the presenter. One of the cheque gets cleared and the other is rejected. Now given the pathetic state of how things get done in this country, the bank sends an SMS alert of cheque rejection to the customer who has written the cheque, but the presenter has no information about this. The presenter in this case being the municipal corporation, given their absolute lackadiasical approach to their own work, they ask my dad to wait till the cheque comes back to them, WITHOUT even telling him what is the process if the cheque gets returned, and if he can make another payment immediately to at least avoid the late charges of any kind.

So after 20 days the cheque comes back to the presenter, the Municipal corporation office, and they suddenly call up and tell my dad to pay a penalty of Rs 2000/- for the cheque rejection. Now for the government bodies, there are no workarounds in processes and they will be dead adamant for recovering the penalty from the customer, never mind their own inept ways of working and causing pain when it comes to their own work models.

So they show the cheque which gets rejected to my dad and my dad finds that the reason the bank has mentioned for rejection is AN ABSOLUTE LIE. There was no correction in the section they mentioned was the cause for the cheque being rejected.

So see the irony of the whole situation - My dad presents these cheques 2 weeks in advance to earn a saving of about 6% and he gets penalised with 80% extra payment. And the reason for this is an absolutely inept process by the bank which passes one cheque of the same customer and rejects the next one with an absolutely illogical and wrong reason.

When the bank alerted about the cheque being rejected, there was a huge hue and cry in the house about how bungling my dad could be and why he has never been keeping his expenses in control and all that which comes with a typical blame game people play in such situations in families. making the person feel worthless, inept and bungling which increases the self doubt in the mind of an old person all the more. causing unnecessary stress that the systems around are really worthless and that there is a loss of hard earned money for all kinds of reasons..

Now with this situation, where the  cheque was rejected for a wrong reason, imagine on one had that feeling my dad would have had that at least his self esteem has a slight upliftment, but at the same time, the pressure that the event causes that one has to go around proving one is not guilty and that someone has caused this situation and now we have to pay the price for it and also try to correct it, and try to get the penalty amount back.

Given all these mental underpinings, for a sr. citizen to be able to handle on his/her own is a huge issue. but somehow people have to do it.

so imagine, how one person’s mistake - intentional or not, causes pain to someone else and the whole chain that sets into motion that could for some people prove very harmful too. The person who passes the cheques made a mistake.. for whatever reason, no one will ask him/her that, and that caused a penalty to be paid, of hard earned money for no mistake of the customer, and eventually over a long period of time, the trauma and stress remains in those impacted… probably sitting far away helplessly watching all this happen - all because the legal system in a ‘developing nation’ is still developing, there is no logical process in place that is fair and binding on all equally, the economy is developing so fast that people are only thinking how quickly they will make money out of it, than ensuring a long term growth and maturity to come by not following short term gratification.

it’s all a vicious cycle we are caught in this globalization game - and we feel powerless because we are probably value driven and we want to do the right thing, and want right things to happen around us so that everyone can be happy.. but that unfortunately is not to be and people will have to suffer for a few more generations…

still we live on hope!!!

I would like to bring to your notice the extreme level of dissatisfaction I have AGAIN been made to experience with the customer care unit of Kotak Credit CArds - this time also includes the ‘credit card collection’ dept.

I would like to speak to someone responsible who can take proper action on the issues I need to highlight.

I have drafted this mail as an extension of my earlier list of issues during card application (provided here for information and reference regd. the issues I have faced with Customer care personnel earlier )

My current issues are related to a payment I made but it was not credited to my account and this is where all the loopholes of the system are bared:

a. I have deposited a cheque towards my credit card payment, due 08-05-2009, in the ATM drop box opp. Inorbit Mall on or around 28th April 09, a week or so in advance of the due date.

b. on 2nd May I received a reminder SMS to make a payment of my bill, which I ignored given that I had already deposited a cheque in advance

c. on 18th May I check my issuing bank account and see that the cheque has not been cleared from my account,  also in my Kotak online account, I see a late fee charges levied.

d. I write to customer service through my online account and I receive a call I think on the next day, 19th May from Ms. Vamsha telling me that she will look into the issue and revert back.

Since I had spoken to Ms Vamsha before also during kotak Credit Card application, and she had reverted back to me on the phone, I was expecting a similar call from her. I am not sure if she called or not and I am not sure if I missed any call from
her.

e. On 22-05-2009, I called up the 24 hr customer care line to check the status of what Ms. Vamsha was to revert back on since I had not heard back from her
Mr. Sharad took the call.

He was a very unhelpful person for whatever reason.

He had  no answers to my queries but in turn was questioning me that why I didn’t call up  earlier to confirm why my payment was not received by the credit cards
division.

He also went to the extent of assuming and telling me that ‘because the
amount of payment is not big, the bank did not revert back and inform the
customer that payment was due’

What kind of a customer care response is this?so if the amount of payment is not big, why does the bank then charge penalty on it?

and who is he to decide if the amount is big or small? Does it not make the bank
ensure that the payments are received however small or big? is this the way to justify why the customer was not informed about a delayed payment/payment not received and that the credit cards div has slipped up on
its responsibilities?

I asked this person whether there is no process to inform the customer that the
payment is not received and the customer needs to make the payment immediately.

He says that a reminder was sent to me on 2nd of May and that should suffice.

What kind of customer service response is this?' My payment due date was 8th May and not 2nd May

So why would I bother about this reminder when I know I have dropped a cheque already in advance?

Due to this I wanted to speak to a supervisor to clarify if this indeed was the case.

He kept avoiding me connecting to a supervisor and told me that there was no
supervisor on the floor and he could not find any to connect with.

So he said he would arrange for a call back today ' 23-05-2009 byaround 1030 or so

It is 530 in the evening.. I am still waiting for a commitment to be fulfilled by
Kotak Credit Cards customer care HELL(p) line.

Are these guys not trained to understand what customer care really means, and how they need to tackle the issues of customers by UNDERSTANDING the real problem? In fact these guys create more of a problem instead of resolving them.

f. So , on 23-05-09 I checked my online account and see that she has replied to my email 
The response indicated that my cheque was outdated hence it was not credited to
my account.

This response has nothing but this information- no steps to resolve this
issue, no advice what needs to be done next, no indication as to what was the
date on the cheque and why it was not deposited. What kind of a half hearted
response is this when a customer is himself/herself showing interest in getting
a response and a resolution for payment not received?

Now I need the following queries to be resolved.

1. As per the Terms and Conditions of the credit card kit, I am told that I will be informed of any delayed payments or payments not received.

Why was this not informed to me that my Credit Card payment has NOT been
received - for whatever reason on or after the 8th of May?

2.The response of my complaint on 19th May was given to me on 21st May and not immediately. Why?

So why did it take 2 more days to figure out that my cheque was outdated?

I find this whole trend of customer care very disturbing esp. in the times to come.

In this whole process, I have not been given an opportunity to: