I would like to share my harrowing experience with this bank. I got a manhattan card from SC some 3-4 years back. Which I have discontinued to use from this year. When I applied for this card, I got several negative feedback from my friends and colleagues, but I continued till tasted on my own. I had to fight hard with them to get my netbanking user id and password at the first place.
With several hick-ups in due course, the real thing happened to me in the last quarter of 2007. I had utilized my primary card for multiple balance trasfers to my other cards. SC practices to assign a pseudo card account to every balance transfer transaction, which is quite unique. And of course there is a processing fee monthly charges associated with any such transaction. I don’t know whether they are continuing with the same policy or what.
Prior to this, I got a letter stating the decrease in my credit limit based on my spending habits!!! This I found repelling too.
In the last quarter of year 2007, I decided to pay in full to discontinue the card. So I made the appropriate payment with clear instructions for apportionment (for my basic card as well my BT accounts.)
In the next statement I was shocked to find that a meagre amount (around Rs 20) was adjusted to my another BT account which was having 0 dues in the previous statement. And from the next statement onwards they started to levy penalty charges on that amount, which could realized as apartial payment. I even took up the matter with customer care, but nothing fruitfull happened.
Just for your amazement, the statements listed Rs. -20 (apprx) as dues on one of my accounts, that meant extra payment on that account. (Late realisation of cheques is a very common pratice of Standard Chartered to fleece their innocent customers. They may take upto one week for a local cheque realization, beware)
So I stopped utilizing their card after sending them an email notification. The same has been confirmed to their collection representatives who called me later on. Still they kept sending me the monthly statements.
I was prompted to write this small review rather my personal experience, after I came across an old statement (April 2008) which is in fact my one of the BT account statement. This statement carried the total dues to the tune of Rs 2609.53, which they made up from a meagre Rs. 20 which they miscalculated. The statement also reads a bottom line which is like: "**YOUR NAME HAS BEEN INCLUDED IN DEFAULTER LIST. THIS IS A SERIOUS MATTER, WHICH AFFECTS YOUR CREDIT WORTHINESS. PLEASE CONTACT MANAGER, CUSTOMER ASSISTANCE."
*Can you take that?
However, afterwards I got my card cancelled, but what would happen to my credit worthiness? This question remains unanswered till date.
Moral of the story is "Say a big no to SC Card".