The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Easy money, but problems aplenty for credit card users

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Dec 17, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Easy money, but problems aplenty for credit card users

Awareness among credit card holders is low, resulting in conflict between them and the banks, say P.Oppili and A.Subramani on problems pertaining to plastic cards.

Problems on the plastic money front are aplenty. The City Central Crime Branch is witnessing all sorts of complaints, ranging from excess billing, harassment from `recovery agents,' counterfeit cards and impolite response, to forcing people to pay dues even before they became customers.

Successive Commissioners of Police have been directly receiving complaints regarding credit card-related offences. This year alone, 10 such complaints were received and First Information Reports were registered by the police, says a senior police official. Of them, five were about international counterfeit credit card frauds.

M.P. Balu, a sound engineer, had four cards and was dealing with two leading private sector banks when he ran into rough weather with the bankers.

For a monthly outstanding sum of a mere Rs. 118, he was asked to pay an interest of Rs. 350.

When asked, he was told that it was for the entire equated monthly instalment amount. When he insisted on details, he was told that the interest had been waived.

"I do not know as to on what basis they calculated the interest are, and why they waived it," he says.

Last week a woman submitted a petition to the Greater Chennai Police Commissioner, R.Nataraj, complaining that she received threatening calls from a credit card agent that she had to pay a balance of Rs 30,000.

But, the complainant said she was not holding any credit card. Actually she applied for a card with the ICICI bank, which was rejected by the authorities.

Mr Nataraj said investigation into some of the cases revealed that the cardholders had purchased materials, using the card but, not paid the dues on time.

This led to problems between the cardholder and the bank. In few other cases harassment and excess were reported, which were immediately attended to, he said. In 2005, the Commissioner himself had received six petitions pertaining to harassment by collection agencies of the private banks.

On inquiry, the bank authorities admitted to mistakes and assured the authorities that suitable instruction would be given to the collection agencies, he added.

Despite a sharp rise in the incidence of complaints the general awareness among cardholders remains abysmally low, say the police authorities. They also admit that complaints received at the higher police level are attended to immediately, while at the station levels the complainants are made to run from pillar to post, leaving the latter frustrated.

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