What's happening to the consumer of India?
I have been viewing numerous cases of harassment. I
have felt some of
these myself. Well the standard grievience is
"We have a credit card offer".
I started getting these calls the minute I gave the
cell phone number in
the bank/insurance etc forms when I switched the
company. Whenever I get
these kind of calls I always ask the person on the
other side as to who it
was and I am not interested in these kind of offers.
I do not like to speak
rudely to people but it just happens that this lot
gets to my nerves. I
always ask if I could speak to their manager and I
always get the answer
that the manager is not there. Is this some kind of
a lousy company or
what? Worst things are that they insist on your
taking the card etc; and
then when I did apply to ICICI bank, nothing
happened. BTW till date I have
applied three times to ICICI bank for a credit card.
I dont know if its a
good thing or bad thing that I did not get the card
yet.
The next one was the calls that I used to get from
Orange when I was in
mumbai. You see I had a prepaid card and they
apparently did not like that.
So they kept telling me what was good for me. I kept
telling them back that
I am grown up and I know what decisions I would like
to take for myself.
Well the next month its the same call, just a
different person. Sometimes I
feel sad for the employee who has to endure my
flame. Well what can I say!
Recently I had seen an upward spiral in the way the
consumer's privacy is
raided. This looks like the huns raiding the
neighbouring countries. First
of all I take a mobile and do not publish it on the
internet because I did
not want anyone to look @ it. I use a mobile phone
for personal needs. I
give my mobile phone to only certain people I regard
are important. These
representatives are definitely not the people I am
looking for.
Oh yeah and I was watching this program called
"Uncovered" on CNBC TV 18. I
suggest everyone watches it. Credit card companies
sending in "Recovery
Agents" aka Goons/goondas, insurance agencies
rejecting the claims on
frivolous reasons, vehicle loan lending companies
snatching away the
vehicle because a customer has not paid the monthly
installment and
ofcourse my favourite "We have a credit card offer".
Catch it all @ www.moneycontrol.com - you will be
aghast @ the scale of
this problem.
Some of the important points that I understood from
the various programs:
1) No agency can send in recovery agents without a
prior court order.
2) Snatching of property cannot happen without a
civil court order.
3) Recovery agents are increasingly being used by
banks and
Citibank seems to lead the lot in
this rot. So stay away from Citibank.
4) In all cases, ensure that you threaten the bank
with a law suit in the
consumer forum if they harass you.
5) NEVER accept lousy service from these people,
they are charging a lot of
money for this.
Links:
http://cnbcwatch.moneycontrol.com/
http://students.iiit.net/~cyrax
Updated:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1154962.cms
the RBI has issued guidelines for the financial and
banking institutions for the
safeguard of the consumer rights. Someone @least had
been working.