Mr/Ms CEO SCB and Services Head,
I need to bring to your notice a case of excellent handling by all entities within home loan dept and people of varied stature within your organization. One truly needs have shameless courage to handle a customer and a case the way this one has been handled. Before I elaborate on the details let me tell you that in my world I am a perfectly sane guy handling a senior sales role with a Cat A company.
I am not frustrated in any corner of my life and live each day quite joyfully. Patience, respect and consideration are some of the first virtues you would notice meeting me unless some one decides to rape my ethical approach and test my nerves to this level that I end up writing to you(CEO) with seemingly no respect(at least the way I am writing this long episode to you both). Please do not mind as your capable team did a handsome job of earning this disgrace for entire organization.
Now coming to only few details compared to the complexity of situation the SCB team dealing with this case crafted for me. This home loan case was progressing quite well with PNB just when my real estate consultant put me across to someone from your bank to pursue this case. And this turned out to be the WORSE experience of my life.
I am almost certain that I would not meet anyone in future as shameless as the team I dealt with regarding this case. From Oct 12th, Its been close to 45 days now that this case is being tossed around essentially me sitting with it chasing people and getting the lamest excuses I have ever heard from any banking organization in the past.
Talk after talk I consoled myself trying to understand their situation but now that I am writing this I have complete confidence that I was being deceived all this while, perhaps even being laughed at for being such a jerk who kept listening to your knowledge less team of unethical bankers. Just like yourself I too am a busy guy so just a few highlights below as I have decided to pursue this case legally as I want to chase the ideology and motive behind this cheap banking gimmicks prevalent in your organization culture.
All the points below are on the basis of evidence, keep in mind the unawareness, negligence, lack of commitment was exhibited throughout by all individuals dealing with this case. I wish I could say that I met atleast one person who fulfilled his duties satisfactorily.
Lack of fundamental home loan product knowledge, varied understanding from different people selling the home loan product. The marketing person who held this transaction was absolutely sure that what I am requesting for is a norm and feature of the product, to his surprise it did not exist for all these years he’s been selling SCB home loan product.
Initial wrong financial assessment by credit manager ignoring the fact that she needed to contact the customer for understanding the financial statement gained to pursue the case and she bypassed that process. Ended up wasting more than a week before I escalated the matter to correct her understanding with a 10 minutes call.
Fundamentally agreeing to me all the time and posing that the corrective measures are being pursued at various levels but nothing concrete comes out to close this case for a month and a half. Every day entire day just Proposals and Promises to defy another one by the end of the day. So many of these promises that one need to be either too strong in his/her belief that they can get it done or extremely stupid to be making those promises to a customer. I was proposed at least 5-6 different proposal by the team none of which were my imagination and not even a signal one could get approved by the policy team. I have heard so much about the policy team that I have become phobic for the future if some other organization ever uses this term again.
Lack of awareness of competitive industry offerings in the home loan industry. Talk to IDBI, Axis, ICICI and PNB. They are offering ROI 10.25 (at lease IDBI) with EMI on the disbursed amount precisely what I asked from your bank too. There is not even a lock in period for IDBI. I was never compulsive with the team to agree with my requirement and pursue this case, they could have left it in time if your policies are not progressive enough to be competitive.
Evident non seriousness towards business, getting the worst excuses like, the concerned approver is not answering the phone, the person is on PTO at whose level the file is sitting, its a Holiday. so many of these and so frequently that I can not even imagine how anyone of these chaps can survive in my shoes being dealing with Enterprise IT sales opportunities worth 1Cr to 100s Cr. Ridiculously incompetent!
Huge non seriousness from policy makers/approvers who are indifferent to resolve issues. Multiple proposals were made to me and ones we agreed none of those could be applied to the case later on as the marketing team did not care to first take an approval from the snail paced policy approvers in your organist who decided not to bless a proposal that the sales folks were confidently positioning to the customer.
Costed me more than lac a rupee in Interest already due to repeated hope that its at the edge of disbursement and tomorrow is the auspicious day. You can’t even imagine the amount of time I have spent over the phone with so many guys from your bank trying to be cooperative all the time.
I genuinely got a feeling that selling home loan products is an adhoc profile for most people I spoke to. You can’t get a point better perception had you been at my place.
Documentation that your team was supposed to get done from builder and anticipated that it would take a week’s time. I got it done in 1 business day trying to speed up their processing pace. Managed to close a personal loan which had a lock in period of few more months.
Unimaginable occurred when on Saturday evening two of your senior officials called me to give me another bad news with another (final) proposal and i.e. pls accept the original plan of EMI on the complete sanctioned amount (1.47 lac of EMI for a disbursement of 90 odd lacs) and that they have the approval to waive off the lock in period and that they would give it in writing. I said I am feeling undignified to be accepting this offer and that I will communicate on Monday morning if I will accept it or pursue it with another bank. So this morning I called up the branch head, no answer, then I called his boss, again no answer. I kept trying all contacts.
Finally in the evening they gathered the courage to jump on a con call with me to shamelessly say that even that approval has been withdrawn. And they would not be able to fund the loan. The sanction letter is sitting with me for weeks to learn this heavenly truth after weeks of anguish. Who the hell gave them the courage to be so ungraceful?
At this stage,
I do not want this loan to be pursued with your bank. RETURN my file(all financial documents, QPT etc) tomorrow.
Return full processing fee tomorrow. Don’t think from a second that I will not pursue this case. Your bank owe the damages of 2.5 lac in the form of builder interest incurred during this period and much more for traumatizing me for 7 weeks and finally leaving me in this distressed situation however do not worry about me as I am sound enough to even take care of problems useless strangers cause to me. My attorney will soon touch base with your esteemed bank.
I commit to you that I will sell 100 cr of home loan product to top corporate employees, just to take that pie away from SCB. Hopefully I will overachieve my targets by helping your business on forums and spread the message to other corporates as well.
Trust me, if there is an award for worst service, this team will win undisputedly. Consider changing the name of your bank from Standard Chartered to Cooperative bank, I am sure even they are better geared up dealing with their business.
-Gagan