I was unhappy with Citibank’s service for reason of not
receiving
any credit card statements regularly. There was also no
acknowledgement from the bank for all my payments made and hence I had asked
Citibank officials for a settlement in order to close the credit card, for
which the Citibank officials had agreed and agreed on Rs.9000 as a full and
final settlement.
The Citibank representative I dealt with in this regard was Mr.
Gopinath, carrying mobile number 9841266186, who stated that he was from
the Credit Card Collection Department of M/s. Citicorp Services – Nelson
Manickam Road.
I agreed to settle the account under the following
conditions:
1.
I would make the final payment in two halves of Rs.4500 each
2.
Towards the above, I submitted two cheques for Rs.4500 each
(ICICI Bank cheque nos: 375257, 375265)
3.
Mr. Gopinath said that he would submit to me the final
settlement letter in a week’s time from then after speaking to his higher
officials.
After submitting the cheques, I continually followed up with
Mr.Gopinath for the settlement letter.
There was no response from him inspite of multiple efforts
to contact him and so I tried reaching the Citibank (CitiPhone : 2822484) from where I received no satisfactory
response.
Fearing I had been a victim of misrepresentation, I took a
drastic step and decided to issue a stop-payment instruction against above mentioned cheque number 375265 issued
by me. The cheque number 375257 had already been cleared a few days earlier.
A week later, two
’Citibank officials’ showed up at my residence - one of whom was the familiar
face of Mr.Gopinath and the other individual who looked extremely rough and
intent on causing trouble. They began to threaten me regarding the cheque
bounce and demanded more money (again
claiming another Rs.9000.) for the settlement in the form of cash since from
here on "CItibank would not accept cheque payments from me".
However, this time, I decided to strengthen my stand and
agreed to release the aforesaid Rs.9000 only once I had seen the settlement
letter that had been promised to me in the first place.
On 11.12.2003 the same two individuals came and took
half the settlement money of Rs.4500 as cash and promised to bring the
settlement letter within 2 hours and collect the remaining cash.
They did indeed show up in 2 hours and submitted final and
full settlement letter. On receiving this, I made the remaining payment of
Rs.4500 in cash. Please keep in mind that in addition to the cheque for Rs.4500
that had been cleared, I had paid a total of Rs.9000 in cash – a
total of
Rs.13500 against a committed sum of Rs.9000.The statement which you have sent doesn’t reflect any such
records of my settlement. This is nothing but wrongful presentation of the
facts and amounts to blatant harassment of your customers.