“If you don’t do it excellently, don’t do it at all. Because if it’s not excellent, it won’t be profitable, and if you’re not in business for profit, what the hell are you doing there?”
The above line sums up my grudges with Deutsche Bank. “A business exists to create a customer”, but the strategies being followed by this bank seems to have forgotten this basic principle of being into business.I have had an unusual experience dealing with Deutshce and which is what compelled me to write this review. I went through all the reviews on Duetsche on MS and found that literally nobody is happy with their services.
It all started on a lazy afternoon with me being in office concentrating hard on fixing a bug when a somewhat usual call lands on my landline. The caller introduced herself and wished to introduce the product "Deutsche Bank Credit Card".
Being a regular user and bearing dozens of credit cards on me, I was generally not interested in any more. Had it been any other day I would’ve disconnected the call without giving it a second thought, but for some unknown reason I decided to listen to her offer.
She started her canvassing by saying since I am working with "XYZ" company, Deutsche is in special collaboration with my company and has special offer for the employees. The offers being presented were mind blowing and seemed too good to be true. For example it contained "since you are a special customer (employee of company "XYZ") you’ll get joining bonus in the form of:
A sonata watch A couple pass for essel world / water kingdom A gift voucher of 1500 Rs Apart from these, their credit card scheme consisted of: 5% cash back on fuel, 10% cash back on all travel, 15% cash back on all travel purchases, 15% cash back on payments.. and so on and so forth
For anybody reading the above, the offer is definitely lucrative and sounded too good to be true. And then if given an option to save as offered above, who would not want to go for it. Given this I applied for the credit back. The sales person was very prompt in follow-ups and sent the carrier with the application form to my office within a matter of 2 hours.
The application form being presented to me gave a detail of all the lucrative offers as told to me over phone. There were different plans of which customers could select any one based on their requirements, but our dear lady told me that I’ll be getting a combo of all these offers in one because "I am the special customer since I am an employee of ’XYZ company". There were certain other features mentioned such as customized look of the card etc, for which extra charges were mentioned, but I was told (again being special customer) that I’ll be getting all those complimentary.
All said and done my request form was submitted and after verifications and all (which took almost a month instead of 14 days as conveyed to me) I got the card delivered at my home. I was surprised to see the careless job Duetsche had done. Everything in the contact info, starting from the address to the phone no’s were all wrong full of typos (I wonder what kind of verification done for over a month led to typos in info filled in application form).
Well, less concern that was to me. What irritated me was the fact that the special features as applied for in the application (card appearance etc.) were all missing. I did not receive any of the complimentary gifts as promised in the application form (sonata watch, essel world passes, gift voucher). To top it all, they had offered me a mere credit limit of very small amount; I mean do they expect me to use their card to buy peanuts?? This despite of me telling them the good credit window I hold on other cards.
I called up the customer care to confirm the schemes that my card hold, and was shocked to know that all that was told to me while applying was false, there is no such scheme as cash back on any sector, and there are no complimentary joining bonus being offered and more so the bank doesn’t have any collaboration with my company "XYZ" and thus there is nothing like " a special customer"!!!
So, were all these gimmicks played just to hand me a card from your bank?? Okay, agreed I have been cheated into taking a card from their bank, but do they really expect business from me after all this? They fell down to the level of faking up wrong application forms and getting info from customers just to meet their target of selling ’n’ number of cards!! But I fail to understand are these people so much out of their mind that they can’t foresee the implications of their actions??
I don’t have a single reason to use their card. They don’t offer me any scheme, while others in market have such lucrative schemes running, they don’t give me enough credit limit to explore and most of all they’ve lost the goodwill factor by already playing dirty gimmicks all of which portray cheap and dirty mentality of the management. The best use I could think of putting this card is to run it between a pair of scissors and throw the pieces back at their face.
This case has depicted the heights of thoughtlessness, on the part of marketing team for this organization and the extent that they are willing to go in their desperation to grab some of the market share. What they don’t realize is the fact that customers are no fools to be taken blind by cheap frills like these and in the end they’ll end up loosing everything to contemporaries.
I did not lose a single penny but earned loads of frustration during my short experience with Duetsche and they in turn lost one prospective customer (may be many more after reading this review) and the corresponding business.
Well I believe in ironies, for people who also believe in the same – Just as I was finishing this write up for my review, I got a call at my landline “Madam I’m calling from Duetsche Bank and since you are an employee of …” … BANG!!!*
Hope somebody realizes and curbs their mistakes before its too late!!!