Introduction
I have been a credit card regular for last 5 years and have been using it both within India and abroad for most of my purchases. Needless to say I have tried out a lot of cards, so I decided to try out SBI card mainly because of two reasons
1) They offered 10% off on bookings at IRCTC
2) They had 0% fuel surcharge for petrol pumps.
The Good Experience
First of all the card that I got was a Visa card, so the accessibility was good and was acceptable at lot of shops. The good news ends there itself. My woes with them started soon after.
Rewarding Experience
After collecting a lot of points, I decided to redeem some of the reward points. One of the option was a PVR cinema tickets for two. I tried to order that online, only to discover there was no option to order one online. I am not one to give up so easily, so I decided to call the customer care and ask for the tickets. After fooling around for 30 minutes, they told me that my redeemed gift is on the way. I was very happy when they said it would be at my house in 15 days. 15 days went by, 30 days went by, two months went by. I decided to call them up and find out. After another delightful wait of 30 odd minutes, the lady claimed that the gift has already been despatched, did you not get it? I said I did not get. She said that she would investigate and give me a call 2 days later. After 5 days went by without the lady calling me back, I again decided to endure the torture of a 30 minute call to find out the status. The answer was the same as the first time. Needless to say there was no call after the 2 days as again promised.
Frustrated, I decided to give up on my rewarding gift.
Email Statement
One annoying customer service representative called my up asking whether I would like email statements instead of mailed statements. I said I don’t want it. He said "Try it sir, for two months and if you like continue it." I asked again as to what if I don’t need after two months, he said just leave it as it is else give me a call and we will continue it. So after two months, I did not bother to call back. The statements of course did not come either by post or by email. After three months when I realized that I was not recieving the statements properly, I decided to call up and the representative cooly says that the statements are going by email. I explained to him that in the first place I did not want email statements, and second that I am not even recieving it.
The customer rep simply says "By accepting to recieve email statements for the two months you have accepted to email statements for life until you call us up and say so." This was totally opposite to what the other guy said. Then again I asked this guy, I don’t care who goofed up, but what about the fines and extra charges you have put for these three months. He again cooly replies, I will reverse the late fees, but you have to pay the finance charges as there is no provision in the system to reverse it.
I asked the guy but why should I pay for you guys mixup and he says, I am sorry sir you have to pay it.
Intrusion into Privacy
To top all this one fine day, my wife recieves a rather threatening call from one of the so called collectors of SBI credit card asking her to repay the pending amount. Two things here, First I have never solicited my wife’s mobile number with the SBI people, so god knows how and why they traced that number and called on it. Second, there was no call to my number or an email to me or a message on my mobile from the SBI people for the payment. I find this pretty appalling that the credit card executives should call my wife without intimating me and then speak in such a rude manner. That did for me and now I have decided to call it quits with SBI Card.
Moral of the Story
So at the cost of Rs. 800 odd that turned out to be the finance charges for the two months, I realized that this is the worst credit card operator in the market. Coming to think of it the loyalty to customer of SBI is amazing, they are willing to let go customers who have been with them for two years for a mere Rs. 800. No wonder the public sector companies in India are going nowhere!! Whatever wonderful ad gimmicks they come up with, until and unless they can provide actual value to customers they are no good simply.
Statuary Warning
If in your wildest dreams you are thinking of being a proud SBI card holder, dash those dreams. Instead of a proud SBI card holder, you would be lame duck sitting there waiting to pay for their goof ups.
Help Needed
If anyone of you are aware of any customer greivance redressal forums then please let me know about it as I would want to discuss my case with SBI with them and see if something can be done because I really don’t appreciate it when somebody takes me for a ride.