Consumer is King » Charge

Bangalore police using modern technology to track repeat traffic offenders

ashish — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:29:15 +0000

One of the cases for bad driving seen in Indian cities is because of inadequate police enforcement. People can commit the same offence multiple times without any worry that they will be caught out for their repeat offence, and this is when they are charged for the offence. In most cases, people are not charged for the traffic offence, making it more difficult for the people who drive safely and without any wrong behavior. It is typically observed in places where traffic enforcement is strict that more people drive carefully, making it easier for those people who drive more carefully; now the Bangalore police is trying to get some modern technology into this whole business by tracking the challans that have been issued and increasing the amount of offence that is charged for repeat offence (link to article):

In fact, any offence committed for the second time will attract a higher penalty. All this will happen shortly as the department will equip 400 personnel, starting from ASI level, with BlackBerry devices in the next ten days. As of now, 280 traffic police personnel have access to the facility.
Sood said: “If one is caught twice for the same offence, the technology will automatically put the person into the ‘habitual offender’ category, resulting in higher fine.” He was speaking at a symposium on ‘Infrastructure development and oil conservation’ organized by Bangalore Management Association and Indian Oil Corporation.

Banks setting limit on withdrawal from other bank ATM’s

ashish — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:08:12 +0000

On April 1, 2009, the RBI brought in a move that was supposed to remove the restrictions on using the ATM’s of other banks. Before this move, if you wanted to use the ATM of some other bank, then it would cost. These would include a direct to the customer for checking account balance, or for withdrawing cash, and could have gone upto Rs. 50 in direct charges. Removal of this limit was a major benefit to customers, since you could now go and access any other ATM. So, if you are out shopping, and run out of money, you would not have to search for the ATM of your bank, instead all you have to do is to find the nearest bank and use the ATM, and all this free of charge. Banks were not too comfortable with this measure, but given that this was an RBI Directive, they went ahead. However, this was free only for customers, the banks still had to clear expenses among themselves. So, if you were an ICICI customer, and wanted to use an ATM of SBI, there were some expenses that the banks would have to bear.
Also, banks that that had huge customer bases and were finding that their ATM’s used to remain busy were obliged to keep on expanding the number of their ATM’s; which is why banks such as SBI and ICICI have a large number of ATM’s, while smaller banks such as Yes Bank, Deutsche Bank, and many others have a much smaller number of ATM’s. By allow customers of these smaller banks to access the larger networks had 2 associated problems:
- It would have some negative effect on the load of the ATM’s of the larger banks
- It would remove the competitive advantage of the larger banks in terms of a much wider and easy availability of the ATM network compared to smaller banks
As a result, there was a push by the Indian Banks Association to add some constraints to this availability of ATM’s, and from October 15, there would be some restrictions on this service (link to news article):

From October 15, a customer can take out a maximum of Rs 10,000 per withdrawal from ATMs not owned by the bank in which he has an account, and the number of such transactions would be limited to five a month.
Going by the IBA guidelines, a savings account holder may get five free third-party transactions a month and could be charged from sixth onwards. However, current account holders might not get any free third-party usage.

For customers of banks with a much wider ATM network, this may not make much of a difference, but for people having accounts with smaller banks and who have got used to being able to use other ATM’s, this restriction may bite (for example, somebody who has got an ATM of another bank right next door). Personally, I have never had chance to use the ATM of another bank, so may not matter much to me.

HDFC Bank fined for ‘extra charges’

ashish — Sat, 16 May 2009 07:14:13 +0000

Normally, dealing with banks is a hot and cold affair. When you have dealings with ATM’s and with over the counter in branches, things are fine normally fine. But when there is something that is out of the ordinary, that is when people have more complaints. This could be when there are some delays in credit card payments, or a person is on the edge when qualifying for a loan, or when there is some problem in making the loan repayments. In such cases, it is hard for bank customers to understand all the charges that a bank levies as penalties or extra charges, and this could lead to banks sometimes levying charges that are more than normal.
Consider the following example when a person had bought a motorcycle on loan from HDFC Bank, and was unable to pay some of the installments on time; he was unable to understand some of the charges levied by the bank and filed a case in the consumer forum against these charges (link to article):

Sending a clear message against unfair trade practices, UT consumer forum directed HDFC Bank to pay Rs 25,000 as compensation and Rs 5,000 as litigation cost to Panchkula-resident Sohan Lal. The bank was also asked to issue a no-dues certificate (NDC) and overhaul its client’s account. Consumer forum’s decision came in the wake of allegations laid by Lal stating that the bank had asked him to pay exorbitant bouncing charges.
Holding that the bank adopted an unfair trade practice of charging exorbitant bouncing fees, the forum held, “The bank did not place any document to suggest if it was entitled to charge Rs 400 as bouncing charges.” The forum stated it was not clear that under what provision of law or agreement the bank was fleecing the complainant. “It is very unfortunate that banks are fleecing those who take petty loans for their basic needs,” it stated.

The problem described in this article is something that a number of people have faced when dealing with banks; some fight it out with complaints and a determined quest to ensure that they are not cheated, others don’t fight it out and accept whatever the bank ordains for them – in either case, it is still incumbent on consumers to not take any extra charges lying down.

Buyers must be told about loan rate changes

ashish — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 14:59:33 +0000

Financial matters, especially the intricacies involved with loans, rate changes, floating vs. fixed, etc can be very confusing to most people; and it seems that banks play on that. People had taken loans induced by the cheap rates that were being offered, and since floating seemed all the more attractive, many floating rates were taken by people who did not understand the full implications of the change in interest rates on floating rate changes. So, when the interest rates started heading upwards, banks revised their interest rates upwards, and in many cases, did not inform the loan holders about the change in rates. This is against policy where loan holders are supposed to be informed in writing that their loan rates have gone up:

Such lapses may occur due to staff inefficiency or system error. A Delhi personal loan consumer since March 2007, points out Sanjeev Talwar of Delhi’s National Consumer Helpline, hasn’t received even his account statement. Some time ago, in Mumbai again, another floating-rate loan consumer discovered that his EMI amount, sourced directly from his account via the electronic clearing system (ECS), had increased without any intimation about a rate hike. Says V M Oza, honourary director, complaints, at Ahmedabad’s Consumer Education and Research Centre (CERC), “There is a provision that rate change cannot be made unilaterally. The bank should inform the customer about it without any hindrance.”
The ombudsman official agrees: “A Reserve Bank of India circular says in case of an increase (in interest rates), the customer must be informed, so if he is not interested, he may be given a chance to repay or shift to another bank which offers a lower rate of interest. In case the bank is at fault (by not informing the customer), it has to take a sympathetic view as this is not in keeping in line with the instructions.”

So, if a customer has not received a change in loan terms intimation from his bank, and is then charged a penalty by the bank, the customer will within his / her rights to ask the bank to waive the penalty due to not having received the new terms. In fact, it is advisable that customers only accept written intimation so that they have the required proof in case of any disputes.