Nov 28, 2003 12:34 PM
3619 Views
(Updated Nov 28, 2003 12:34 PM)
I am stationed in Trivandrum and my salary account is linked to HSBC. Within 2 months of joining I applied for a credit card. Things were generally pleasant for the 1st year( u know about salary accounts)
1)Credit card: I got a credit card on Sept 2001 by Nov /Dec of that year I got a annual fee(against the credit card) pretty absurd, but I guess such information is not told to the customer earlier , if only I had known I would have applied for the card in Jan.
2)Debit card: When I had joined they had given me a ATM card, a few months later the concept of Debit card came into picture. I was not interested in it since I used my credit card extensively.Two years later when I was actively monitoring my bank statement thro the net I noticed a charge which was confirmed by the HSBC guys as the annual fee of the debit card. They say the atm card has been upgraded to a debit card
(a) I never wanted a hsbc debit card who gave them the authorisation to upgrade.
(b) why force a thing onto the customer and not even fore-warn him. I never thought I would dislike the word ''upgrade'' so much.
3)Credit card: -Year 2003 :
By the end of 2003 it was time for the dreaded annual fee for the credit card also my card needed to be renewed. I decided to redeem my points against the annual fee. What I was looking for was a 700Rs ==700 points and that the matter would be closed. But what I saw was a 856Rs= 856 points. I decided to follow up , from them I heard that there was a service tax of 8 %. I decided to go thro the corporate web site to actually arrive at the figure since 8% of 700 does not total to 856. I came upon a tarriff page for creditcards
listen carefully all innocent fools like me. When we go for a credit card we look at only the annual fee ( in terms of fees) we dont really bother too much about the rest of the fees nor do we have the time. Lesson 1 all ways go thro the tarriff page from top to bottom since usually there are lot of things that the bank will not tell u when u enroll. It was clearly stated in the tarriff that the annual fee that the fee from the 2nd year would be 700 Rs. No ''*'' or any thing beside it to signify that there are additional charges. But if u accidentally scroll down 3-4 pages u will see a statement saying that there is a service tax of 5% for all the fees. So why are the collecting 8% when the document says 5%. So have they forgotten to update the document?? I informed them about this and said that someone was sooner or later going to sue them. They just replied that it was part of the latest tarriff. Another thing is I still dont understand the 856 Rs instead of Rs 756 (tax included). All I can assume is that they have used the card replacement charge( since my card had expired and so a new card was sent), most people would think that the replacement charge is only incase u lose ur card and u have to replace it.
4) Offers:(Credit Card)
Initially when they had started they had some good offers of discounts even in places like trivandrum. They used to send small booklets with place wise listings. These were pretty good since like a place like trivandrum I could find offers. 2 years down the line,
(a) they have stopped sending those small booklets
, u are expected to log into the site and check the offers
(b) most of the offers are for abroad and mumbai and delhi
(c) there is no sorting of offers place wise meaning u need to search thro all the pages to find what u want
(d) I found a lot of expired offers
Last year and this year I have seen them coming with special offers which go like this '' shop between Oct 20 and Nov 20'' and send us the reciepts to win -------''. Now tell me , HSBC has such a good network of IT infrastructure thro which like a clock work u get ur monthly credit card bills why cant they track the bills instead of we sending our recipts , who has the time for this crap? is it all a gimmic to show that they have hollow offers.
I probably will try to transfer my salary account to HDFC or something like that and take my credit card there .
