Guess what! You don’t need to take a membership, go to a Country Club resort, use their disgusting and inadequate facilities, or eat their food to know how lousy they are. You don’t even need to pay an advance! Yes, you read it right - you don’t need to PAY Country Club for them to TAKE your money.
For a long time, I was swamped by phone and email requests to let them make a presentation to me on their new offers. I finally allowed them to do so. The offer was based on a deal with Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) for their credit card customers - interest-free EMIs and all. Of course, 7 or 8 "offers" were thrown in, including a 1000+ sq.ft. plot. The salesman wanted me to fill up an application form, but I declined. I asked him to first show me a few of their properties. He gave me the location and contact details of their Hosur Road property.
Then he pulled out a mechanical credit card swiper (the kind that was used before the electronic ones made their appearance), and said that he wanted an impression of my card so that he could validate it with SCB. I saw no harm in that, since without my signature, the charge slip was useless. Also, the mechanically swiped charge slip had less info on it than a photocopy of the card would have had. I allowed him.
I visited the Hosur Road place. It was the pits. No facilties to speak of. The swimming pool was dirty. The rooms were damp with seepage and smelled awful. The restaurant was OK, but then I didn’t eat anything there. And the member-discounts were so low, you could get similar discounts almost anywhere by just walking in! Overall, I didn’t like it at all. And oh, the name was Country Club Lakeside, and there was no lake in sight - apparently, it had dried up!!
I called up my friendly salesman and told him I didn’t want a membership. He persuaded me to look at other properties. But then I fell ill and I couldn’t go anywhere else for a few days.
And then, the sky fell on my head! My credit card statement arrived. It carried a charge of Rs. 1, 15, 000/-, attributed to Country Club! I checked with the bank, and I was told that this was a valid transaction. I raised a formal dispute. A month later, when my card was declined at a merchant’s premises, I called up the bank. They informed me that they had found the disputed transaction valid.
I protested that they hadn’t even informed me. To that, they said they’d be sending me a letter with the proof.
The letter duly arrived by courier the next day. The attachment was the very same charge slip that my dear salesman friend had swiped. Only, this time, an amount of Rs. 1, 15, 000/- was written in, and a very childish attempt at forging my signature was made. Get this right friends - my signature was VERY INCOMPETENTLY FORGED, and Stardard Chartered Bank could NOT make out the difference in 30 days of investigation!!! And by the way, I had not given my signature in ANY FORM to the Country Club salesman when he visited me. So where did he get to see my signature? Not from SCB’s records perhaps...? I wonder...
Status now: I have written to SCB in full detail about the relevant events, asked them to reverse the transaction, and to restore my card. SCB and Country Club will both hear from my lawyer.
BTW, I have provided a product rating ONLY because Mouthsut.com has made it mandatory.