Harassment by HSBC Bank, Powai Branch

I have an account with HSBC bank, Powai branch. I have been repeatedly let down by the service from both the call centre, bank representatives and the bank branch itself right since the time I have taken a loan against property last year. Just to keep matters to the point, I shall share with you the latest goof up made by the branch staff.

1) I wanted to prepay the loan amount that was permitted without any additional charges, for which I spoke to the representative Ms Sagarika at Powai Branch around the 10th of June 2009. I was told that I would be able to prepay 25% of the sanctioned amount.
To this I informed Ms Sagarika that I had also pre-paid in the month of December 2008 through the call centre and at that time, though I was initially informed that I could prepay 25% of the sanctioned amount, I was later informed that I could only prepay 25% of the outstanding amount. I agreed to this at that time and the pre-payment was made accordingly. To this she said that she would confirm with her senior and after doing so, confirmed that it is 25% of the sanctioned amount. So I agreed to pay Rs 250000, which was debited from my account.

2) On the same day I had also made a request for my monthly EMI’s to remain the same as before (i.e Rs 47425). The amount had reduced due to reduction in interest rate.

3)On 18th June 2009, I received a statement on prepayment where a prepayment charge of Rs 6599/- was applied. To this I immediately contacted the bank call centre and bank representative.
My story of repeated bank visits and reminders has started since then.

4) Since the 18th of June 2009, Ms Sagarika has been giving me a time frame of 2 days and continuously extending. From 2 days she took the timeframe to 5 days by saying that the matter would be sorted out by the weekend.

5) When I saw things were not moving forward, I gave a call to the call centre giving details of whatever happened and also giving the name of the bank representative. I was told then that the bank representative would give me a call back, but that never happened when it was supposed to.

6) When I received my monthly deduction statement in the month of July2009, I was surprised to see that there was an EMI deduction of only Rs 31935, though I had made a request for keeping the EMI’s same as when the loan account was started, more than a month before(ie when I had done the prepayment).

7) I contacted the bank once again and at that time, Ms Sagarika asked me whether I had given the application for keeping the EMI’s unchanged.
This question was raised despite the fact that Ms Sagarika had herself written the application for me, mentioning the amount of Rs 47,425.

8) On 23rd July 2009, I received an SMS from the bank representative Ms Sagarika, stating that the penalty waiver would be effective by 25th of July 2009 for sure, the proof of which I have till date.

9) Even after this I made many visits to the bank, and spoke to the representative, getting promises that the matter would be sorted out by the end of the week. Sometimes I would return back because the waiting period would be so long that my other more important work would get affected.

10) On the 12th of August 2009, I spoke to Mr. Nitin Ravalallu, associate Vice President- Customer service (Personal Financial Services) in the presence of Ms Sagarika about the situation. I was promised by him that he would chase it up and get back to me in the evening. The call, I never received

11) When I received the EMI deduction statement in the month of August. I found that the deduction was still not what it was supposed to be. There was a deduction of Rs 44,237, whereas it was supposed to be Rs 47425. On one hand I am trying to close the loan account as soon as possible, but the bank is just delaying it.

12) On 17th August 2009, I gave a call to Mr. Nitin in the morning, to which he said he would give a call back in 5 minutes and I ultimately received a call from him in the evening. He politely said that due to rush in the bank, he was unable to call back in the timeframe.He however said that he has taken the matter up forward and would get back to me the next day(i.e the 18th). Today is the 21st of August, surprisingly for Mr.Nitin 18th August 2009 has still not arrived

I just wonder on what basis do the bank representatives give a timeframe. From whatever experience I have had, it just seems that they give a timeframe to make the customer feel happy at that time and shoo him/her away from the branch so that the grievance posed by the customer is not heard by others.

This above experience is just one of the bitter experiences I have had with the bank and I am in no way going to accept the penalty for no fault of mine. In fact I am even considering suing the bank for the torture I have had to go through and the amount of valuable time , and efforts I have had to spend on this simple matter, which has all occurred due to misinformation given by the bank representative.

I am looking forward to seeing that this matter getting resolved and the amount being credited back into my account within a week from now, since this saga has already been going on for over 2 months.

After my banking experience with HSBC, I feel that the more appropriate full form would be HARRASSMENT AND SLY BANKING CORPORATION.