I had an HSBC Gold Card that was sold to me with the promise of being "lifetime free". When the card expired, they provided me with a platinum card saying the old card had been upgraded. Even though this was an "upgrade", they never cancelled the old card. Instead they levied an annual fee of Rs. 2000 on it which, considering the facilities the card provides, is astronomical. Needless to say I called them up and said I refused to pay. After a while they stopped sending me the bills for the Gold card so I thought it had been cancelled(my mistake). Then one fine day, an HSBC employee calls me up and threatens me that they will screw up my CIBIL rating if I didn’t clear the bill on the gold card(the charges were the annual fees plus the interest accumulated - no purchases from my side.) When I asked them why they charged annual fees after giving it as a lifetime free card, the call center guy admitted that their sales agents are authorized to lie to make sales.
They asked for Rs. 6000-odd but finally after some haggling they agreed to cancel the card and dues for around Rs. 1500.
As an epilogue, the collection agent said that his company collects 15-16 such dues for HSBC everyday, so apparently HSBC is making good business out of this.