Beware of cheap money swindlers

The most interesting thing about life is “life” itself. It exposes us to a variety of people and events which have an influence on us. When faced with similar situations in the future, any human being who wants to progress would consciously try to apply what one learnt in his/ her earlier encounter.  Though I had seen this happening umpteen times in my own life, an other facet of human nature, which is linking similar incidents and observing a phenomena, came to the fore this week. Herewith I am narrating some incidents which happened this month.

Incident one: The first day of the month brought my friend, who works in an IT firm, his salary and along with it a shock too. He had been charged with deductions like accommodation expenses and the guy had not even stayed anywhere other than home. He demanded that his money be returned back but he was given a cold shoulder telling that the salary credit happens only once in a month and he would receive the money only in the next salary. My friend is losing out on spending the money when he needs it most and is also losing out on the return on the money he would have earned by investing. I agree that mistakes do occur but is it not fair to expect to correct the mistake at the earliest? How long will it take for the company to issue a cheque in the employee name? 

Incident two: The next incident happened two days after this. My cousin had applied for a credit card and his salary figures would make all the banks readily offer him a gold card. For some reason or the other, the bank rejected his application. The worst case was he got a call from some other bank which told him that his credit card application was processed and he would be getting his credit card soon. Is this what is called as cross selling? You would apply for a credit card in one bank and the worst thing is that the documents you submit would be with a different bank. The agony does not end here. He asked for the documents to be returned and they said “We will wait and decide”, why should they wait and decide to resend a document which they should not have had at the first place. When my cousin asked for the reason for the rejection of his application, he was told that the bank’s policies forbid them from revealing the reason. 

Incident three: My friend had deposited some money in a renowned bank. He had specifically insisted to issue the FD on the date in which he had invested. He was aware of the tricks that these guys would play. But even after saying all this, the date on his FD was four days after the date in which he had deposited the money, though the money in his account was deducted real time. But he was not able to ask as the bank authorities as the expense involved in traveling to the bank and the time spent on this would be worth more than the interest for the four days. But, this is how some banks are profiting by making use of the float money for their own use. Remember there are millions of customers and the float money they get would be huge 

Incident Four: My friend had an account with bank A which was not operated for some months. She issued a cheque to transfer the money from bank A to bank B. She was fined by both the banks for cheque bouncing. She was stunned as she had sufficient balance in the account for the cheque to be cleared. The fine amounts are usually large. When she contacted the bank, the bank official apologized saying that they had an automatic program to reject cheques passing through a dormant account. The bank activated the account without the customer asking for the same. Here, I got a new definition of activation of account. Is it the bank’s discretion to activate an account or is it the customers’. My friend was told that they would try to get the money reimbursed.

 Four incidents within a short span of time and no doubt a web were spun around in my mind linking all the four. What is the common thread that runs through all these four? They are ‘inefficient systems’, and  ‘ Greed of the branch offices of Corporate to make money at any cost’. Is there a way to avoid all these ? Public awareness is one way to prevent all these. At present, these Corporate are not bothered to correct their mistakes as only a few customers recognize these mistakes. How many of us check every line item of our bank statement? How many of us read through all the terms and conditions before applying for a credit card? How many of us fill up the entire application of a bank deposit or a mutual fund purchase. Due to lack of time and in some cases laziness, we ask the bank personnel to fill up the form and in many cases they include wrong information. So, it is not only they who are at fault. We are at fault in having allowed crimes like this to perpetuate.

So, Arise, Awake and Stop not still the cheaters are chucked out!!!!!