Mar 26, 2010 07:32 PM
18455 Views
I had availed of a motor loan from Tata Capital for purchasing a Ford Fusion in December 2008. The first three months the ECS failed due to a technical reason(in my account the reason was given as ECS is not registered). As per the contract no fine of any sort is levied if the reason for a bounce is technical in nature. So for those first three months I paid the ECS through cheques which were collected by a representative from Tata Capital at my workplace. Eventually on advise from Tata Capital I switched the loan ECS from Citibank to ICICI and from the fourth month onwards the ECS started happening smoothly and has been so for the past 2 years now. End of story life moves on right? Wrong.
I now have a legal notice from some Ashish Agarwal Advocates in Mahakali caves Andheri which tells me in pretty threatening language that I need to pay Tata Capital INR 1043.23 for outstanding dues and that I should contact a certain Vinod to understand more about this. So I first callup TataCapital to understand what the payment is for. the call center rep says that a relationship manager will contact me before 6PM(this is at around 3PM on 25Mar2010). As expected no one called. So I called up again and was told to go visit a nearby branch of TataCapital. My argument was that if I go to a branch I do not have access to my records(or I lug my laptop and printouts and show them how the cheques processed and why the first three months of ECS was not because of insufficient funds but because of technical reasons). Anyways so I decided to call up Vinod and figure out what this thing was all about. This is how part of the conversation went:
Vinod: Hello Ashish Advocates
Me: Hi, have this notice from you guys regarding a loan I took from tata capital.
Vinod: Yes I'm talking from Tata capital
Me: Ok so explain it to me.
Vinod: What's the contract number
Me: 7000002555
Vinod: Ok you have to pay 1043.23
Me: right, for what?
Vinod(getting agitated): your cheque bounced for insufficient funds
Me: Ok I am not arguing with you I just want this explained to me. I want you to tell me exactly when a cheque bounced.
Vinod(going through records): first was on Feb3 2008, then March3 2008 and then on Apr3 2008
Me: Ok as I see it in my bank records the reason for bounce on 3Feb2008 was "ECS not registered" also there was 68645 in the account on the day preceeding and following 3Feb2008. Also there was a debit of 10075 on 3rd which was immediately returned with the technical error code.
Vinod: Oh ok ok yes right 3Feb was not because of insufficient funds but technical reason so no fine for that. The one on 3rd March and April is a problem.
Me: Right I have the account statements for March and April in front of me and they say the same thing "ECS is not Registered"
Vinod: no no there was insufficient funds in those two months as well.
Me: Right, this is a salary account and it gets credited on the last day of the preceding month. On all three months I see a balance of over 68k in the account on the day preceding or after the 3rd. also I see that a cheque was collected on the 5th, 7th and 25th of those three months for 10075(thats the ECS amount). No fine was imposed as the problem was between Tata Capital and Citibank as they were unable to make the ECS go live. Clearly I would have paid a fine of 400 if it was due to insufficient funds but I was always asked for 10075 not 10475!
Vinod: No sir it is a problem with Citibank we can't do anything about it. So if you pay the 1043 we will unserve the notice.
Me: Clearly it is a problem between Tata Capital and Citibank, On my part whenever a request was raised I made the payment by cheque. If there was a fine component I would've been more than happy to have paid then and there rather than have this notice served and then haggled with you guys.
Vinod: Sir aap pay kardo we will take back the notice!
End of call.
So pretty much conceded that the problem was that they had not been able to enforce the ECS mandate with Citibank and not because of a fault on my part(I had signed the ECS mandate and handed it over to Tata Capital beyond that it was upto them and citibank to make it happen)
Next I called up Bhavna Fords accounts department. The guy agreed with me that the problem was on the tata Capital end and passed me along to the Relationship Manager of TataCapital, Vihar Inamdar. Call him up and he too agreed the probelm is on their end not because of me. I mention the threatening tone of the notice which has been served. He says this is a template and they send out about 10000 of those on the 3rd of each month. I am kindof shocked. He says not to worry please talk to the Operations Manager he will sort it out. Gave me the number of the Ops manager.
Ops manager gives me the scary treatment. Says It's actually 2k+ that I need to pay. So I speak to him on logic and he asks me to send the bank account statements for Feb, Mar, apr 2008 so he can see why the bounce happened.
seriously I've spent half a day on trying to resolve this mess and still no resolution in sight. I could've made 10075 in the half day if I had focused on my work instead. The only reason I am continuing this argument is because I fear that if I just pay them without getting a clarification on why exactly I owe them a fine then they will continue to do so without any fear of being pulled up for gross misconduct and bungling. Here's a scary case on the same lines: https://consumercourt.in/car-loan/11500-tata-motor-finance-cheating.html
