Around Nov 2006 I took a loan on credit card for rs. 1.25 lacs from citi after being pursued relentlessly for about a month.
That was it. A seriously stupid mistake. till the time I was paying in installments no problem.The moment I called the citi card line (from Mumbai)..these guys made a mess of everything first call they told me pre-closure department will handle the case.
First time I called on a saturday to speak to the pre closure deptt. I was told they dont work on sat and sunday.
Next time I called around 5 pm (came home early during week day to close this matter) as it is not professional to speak on the phone for such a long time from office for personal work (typically citi calls last anywhere upto 45 minutes if there is a problem).
I was told at 5.15 pm that computer was down. the first line of guys on +22 28232484 would not allow me to speak to the pre-closure dept.
After that I called around feb mar and confirmed that if I made a payment by cheque then my loan amount would be closed.
confirmed following things from the guy :
whether I needed to speak to pre-closure dept or anyone else to close the loan. (answer was no.)
whether I needed to take any action after I paid the cheque (answer was no.)
total amount for which I should make the cheque for to completely close the loan. (amt given was rs. 90878).
so I dropped a cheque for the amount the very next day.
received an sms from citi that said informed that citi had received the cheque.
I ensured from my end that payment cheqyue was received by them in the same payment cycle.
in the month of april 08 I saw that additional amount was outstanding on the same card (i had not done transactions on that card and only used it for taking loan).
after about 10 days of follow up and 4-5 hours of follow up (which it seems included the supervisor at the call center end pulling up the conversation recording) since he was able to relay it to me word by word, I was informed that it was a mistake on the banks part and that they would roll back charge of rs 3600 .
the statement that I have received today did not have the roll back ..
so I called citibank (on 022-28232484) and after a telephone call which lasted about 19 minutes (out of which I was put on hold for 15 mins approx) I was informed that citi would not roll back the charges.
After this I went to https://citibank.co.in tried using Complaints link from top right. it does not work.
On pressing submit button I got error "Page not found".
So if anyone has any doubts about how much the citibank cares for it customer then this experience should tell you exactly what they care for. Part of the problem is the palliness of the Indian government with the business houses.
world wide the consumer is taken care of by the government.
but the Indian government has sold the middle class Indian consumer totally to be at the mercy of the business houses.