I was approached by a Citibank agent and was told that the Citibank is providing credit card absolutely free of cost for a period of 3 years. Based on his communication, I availed the free credit card.
As an experienced customer, I made very explicit on the card application form itself -
The card is to be provided only if it is free of cost for a period of 3 years. No money shall be paid in form of annual charges / fees / insurance charges etc.
A recommendation : All the friends of mouthshut should make this kind of notes in case such free offers are coming to you. This shall help you avoiding the problems that may come in future.
To my utter surprise, I was charged the fees in the first statement.
Now the pain started. I had to make phone calls, emails, letters and what not. Although I was successful in reversal of the fees, I observed the following:
You should be crisp, crystal clear and very explicit in your communication. This shall help you a lot. As my declaration on the application form helped me at later date.
Normally, tele-call center executives do not have adequete powers to exercise. Despite being very humble and co-operative, they may not be in position to help you out straight away. So you have to exercise all the possible channel of communication i.e. email, phone, letter etc.
Explain your problem crisply and ensure that it is understood by the call center executives. You may request for a repeatation of the problem from the call center person, if you are talking telephonically. Because, I had experience that after talking all the things, the other person could not describe the problem properly.
Be ready with all your records and keep them in hand despite the fact that all the things are readily available with the call center executive.
Do not expect any support from the agent through you have applied the card. Agents are normally evasive, when such problem arise. They are botherd with the commission they get at the time of application. This is my experience, others may have different experience.
Although, my problem is solved and fees are reversed. Still late payment charges and interest etc. are appearing in my statement. Because, fees reversal took more time and by the time they had prepared the next month statement. Now, I am in process of reversal of that also. I believe that I will be able to reverse that also.
This has forced me to think that I was persuasive and continued the efforts. Had I left the efforts and paid the fees, the card would have come to me at a cost. I think that credit companies are providing cards free of cost on probability theory. Say, out of 100 even 50 shall pay the fees, it will serve their purpose!