I was unhappy with Citibank’s service for reason of not receiving any credit card statements regularly. There was also no acknowledgement from the bank for all my payments made and hence I had asked Citibank officials for a settlement in order to close the credit card, for which the Citibank officials had agreed and agreed on Rs.9000 as a full and final settlement.
The Citibank representative I dealt with in this regard was Mr. Gopinath, carrying mobile number 9841266186, who stated that he was from the Credit Card Collection Department of M/s. Citicorp Services – Nelson Manickam Road. I agreed to settle the account under the following conditions:
I would make the final payment in two halves of Rs.4500 each
Towards the above, I submitted two cheques for Rs.4500 each (ICICI Bank cheque nos: 375257, 375265)
Mr. Gopinath said that he would submit to me the final settlement letter in a week’s time from then after speaking to his higher officials.
After submitting the cheques, I continually followed up with Mr.Gopinath for the settlement letter. There was no response from him inspite of multiple efforts to contact him and so I tried reaching the Citibank (CitiPhone : 2822484) from where I received no satisfactory response.
Fearing I had been a victim of misrepresentation, I took a drastic step and decided to issue a stop-payment instruction against above mentioned cheque number 375265 issued by me. The cheque number 375257 had already been cleared a few days earlier.
A week later, two ’Citibank officials’ showed up at my residence - one of whom was the familiar face of Mr.Gopinath and the other individual who looked extremely rough and intent on causing trouble. They began to threaten me regarding the cheque bounce and demanded more money (again claiming another Rs.9000.) for the settlement in the form of cash since from here on "CItibank would not accept cheque payments from me".
However, this time, I decided to strengthen my stand and agreed to release the aforesaid Rs.9000 only once I had seen the settlement letter that had been promised to me in the first place.
On 11.12.2003 the same two individuals came and took half the settlement money of Rs.4500 as cash and promised to bring the settlement letter within 2 hours and collect the remaining cash. They did indeed show up in 2 hours and submitted final and full settlement letter. On receiving this, I made the remaining payment of Rs.4500 in cash. Please keep in mind that in addition to the cheque for Rs.4500 that had been cleared, I had paid a total of Rs.9000 in cash – a total of Rs.13500 against a committed sum of Rs.9000.
The statement which you have sent doesn’t reflect any such records of my settlement. This is nothing but wrongful presentation of the facts and amounts to blatant harassment of your customers.