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It so happens like my Mom got a letter from the Indian Overseas bank or IOB, two years back, informing of a Fixed deposit that has matured which they are automatically renewing. My mom tried to search for and think of when she made that fixed deposit some 10 years back and where she kept the original certificate of the deposit to claim it back.

She approached the bank, which requested her to search all places where she might have mis-placed it.. because without the original certificate it would be difficult for them to process it. My mom had agreed and over the next few months, in about 3 months she searched over at many places, including her ancestral home in her native town when she went there for a relative's wedding.

She couldn't find the originals.. She approached the bank, which said that it can provide a duplicate 'original certificate' if she filed a banker's bond document requesting for it saying she lost the originals at a cost of 250 indian rupees.

It so happens that, She made the request, got a certificate, and also the amount of the deposit on its maturity.

Two years after this, Yesterday, she gets a call from the bank saying that it wasn't her money, that they had processed it by error.. and the original depositor has approached the bank for the money with the original certificate.

They said.. 'We are calling up to notify you of this issue.. and request you to check your documents on this.. and we will call you again in one hour'..

My mom immediately recollected that it is why she could never remember anything about the deposit, and neither find the original 2 years back.. she waited to see what the bank tries to tell her in their next call.

The called to say that they would expect her to visit the bank and possibly re-credit the amount back to the bank.

It seems the original investor himself has been the bank's manager 2 years earlier. At the kodambakkam branch of IOB. And that he had deposited this in the name of 'Uma' which was his wife's name. Since my mom's name also happens to be Uma, the bank had sent the intimation of the renewal to the wrong address and lost record of the original investment temporarily (or permanently).

My mom consulted a relative who once worked in IOB, who told her that sending a wrong intimation letter can be understood as a clerical error, but they have went aboard to wrongly give the money itself to you, which is totally ridiculous.. and dont pay them unless you get it in writing from them that they made a mistake on this and are requesting a re-credit.

By common sense, most of us would say, the bank will never a letter like that confirming on its handling of the money which could be used to dis-credit the bank publicly.. and neither they can sue my mom because that would also prove they accept the error.

But my mom also had a point that they could try to make this a mistake on us by trying to screw up with other relationships I have with the bank in my savings account or other accounts in future... and my mom prefers to recredit the money back to the bank because she understands now that the money was never hers as she doesn't remember making any such investment, and she only had to believe it otherwise because of the bank's letter.

The amount was small.. 33.5 thousands and I told my mom that she is deciding to give it back only because the amount was less and she wouldn't if it was some 2 lakh indian rupees.. to which my mom quickly adds 'if it were 2 lakhs I probably would not have believed that letter at all firstly.. because I never had that kind of money to deposit then'

Whatever.. this episode proves how badly IOB is capable of goofing up.

Another similar episode:

This has happened in the Kanadukathan branch of IOB which is Kanadukathan near karaikudi town, some 10 hrs drive from Chennai.

My mom went to the kanadukathan bank to check on her account and stuff.. while she noticed the manager of the branch has changed. She came back home and asked her father (my grandDad) what was with the old manager who was a nice man and was there for almost 4.5 long years.. (it seems IOB managers are transfered only once in 5 years)

My granddad has narrated the below episode.. as reason for the manager change.

It so happened that somebody who had taken a jewel loan at the bank, came back to repay the loan and take the jewels. While the repayment was processed and jewel furbished back to the claim processing clerk who returns the jewellery, in those few minutes between the time when it was going to be handed over to the customer, the jewel got stolen.. The bank claimed that somebody who was at the branch that time had taken it.. these were old days and even these days IOB only have surveillance cameras in its branches in cities, not lesser towns/villages.

The guy bluntly said he wanted his jewels back and not its cost. This issue got on for a while as a disagreement when the bank chose to informally settle the dispute with panchayat like meeting with the branch manager, some of the clerks, the customer, and some outsiders who were influential. It was forced upon the customer that there is no way they could get back the jewels, and so he will have to take the cost value of the jewels. Also it was forced upon the manager that he bear the cost from his personal money because neither the bank can blame anybody to take up the responsibility or pay part of the amount, nor they could open-up on the lost article because it would discredit the bank's way of handling it.

More so, I think IOB managers decide things based on the cost of it and put the cost to the bank.. they write it off... except strange cases where the manager takes ownership of the error.

And so it happens that the manager paid up the 60 thousands from his pocket, and subsequently requested an immediate transfer from the branch because of the episode.

This bank called UTI in India was in a financial crisis, and they smartly sold off when market was at its prime couple of years back. They became AXIS bank and all UTI branches and operations became AXIS.. They advertized, with twins in ADs, saying both UTI and AXIS are one and the same, not to worry, just the name is different. I am sure they will be cursing all their intelligence for that concept (of the ADs) now. Because the once happened financial crisis, is back with the bank and they are probably worser than the state what UTI was in to earlier.

I have a savings account with the bank, with some namesake money in it.. Obviously that is not the interesting part...and I am not going to ask you for donations to lift my account balance. Because the bank is doing just that. They are asking all their savings bank customers to put money into the bank to help their bankruptcy.

I got a call today from AXIS bank, a business development officer, who said, the bank's status with funds is not good.. I asked "do you mean.. the *bank's* status is not good? ".. and he said "yes, we don't have enough funds to run operations, and we thought it is a good time to call our known customers and ask them to transfer all their money in other banks into ours.. for the time being, to get us back in shape"

I couldn't feel anything for a while, let alone sympathizing, and after a while I got irritated and asked the officer is this how AXIS bank does business development.. and he got into the same thing.. couldn't feel anything for a while..

So much so, I kept the phone and was thinking what was happening..

Is this something that is there with all banks.. ?
Is this why recently when all banks increased their lending rates by 0.5%, ICICI bank increased its lending rates by 0.75% ?
The only thing that is coinciding financially is the stock market crash.. Did all banks put in a lot of money in to the stock market when the markets were hugely bullish a few months back ? and now that the market has crashed royally they are all crying over the pain of the money ?

Whatever, but we all think all the time, that banks know it best when it comes to managing money. No, they also are run by people like us is the fact.

Get back to some hard work with hard earned money.
If you want to invest in stock market, invest yourself and learn the nitty gritty.. not through mutual funds..

If you want to invest in anything.. invest yourself and learn the area, don't don't trust anybody with all that money.

At the end of day, I keep trying to think on any positive sides in this whole thing to keep my head away from worrying about that namesake money in AXIS bank.. oh yes.. there is a positive side.. I can tell everybody... "A bank...a bank.. asked me help by requesting me money.. imagine how big and rich I should be .. ha.. that's something".

Spider on their website..

this is a website of an active sports accessories company. They have done it so nice and different, you will think real good animation films on websites are not real far from happening.

venom.spyder.com

Living in a country like India could get very exciting especially with the way companies throw up bad to worse services for competitive to high costs for the Indian market. Most Indians, "these companies assume" are not people who know a great deal about the services and providing little call-center based customer service would do to keep them happy.

And not many Indians seem to know or bother that many services like mobile services, internet services, web hosting services are costlier in India than even some developed countries. Not because the technology is difficult here, but because the market demand is huge here and if not jack they can always sell to some harry.

And when you don't get proper services, or importantly correct and proper bills, all you try to do is call up a customer service number and ask. But most customer service numbers in India are run by executives who are themselves less informed and are not well trained to answer questions properly.. and to add to it, you will cry over most of their English and their understanding of your questions in English.

First steps when u have a problem with an Indian company:

1.
If you can, ask the customer executive whether he knows your local language like Tamil, kannada or Telugu, etc., and explain him the problem politely. No, Shouting you should do only when they don't understand what you are saying and wasting your time more than 30 mins on the phone and also not transferring your call to a senior officer after your repeated request.

2.
If the customer executive puts you on hold, or says senior officer is busy can you wait, or says senior officer will call you later, .. simply say you are willing to wait how much ever time it takes and wait for about 20 mins and then they will put you on to a proper guy.
Why that long?
Well like said before.. indian market has high demand on all daily life services like what I mentioned.. so the companies sign-up too many customers and since india is a rising country, the companies are learning having a huge customer base. this might take another 5-10 years for companies to ripen up and provide proper services and help to customers, though they showcase today itself as if they have everything in place.

Thought waiting on hold is a pain both by patience and money spent on phone call, if you are complaining for a mobile service problem to your mobile operator through the same mobile phone, you will most definitely not charged for the call, and most often your calls to such phone numbers will be toll-free.. verify this before your call, so you know you can wait on the line without worries.

3.
Call centers misunderstand their trade. Customer care numbers are all call-centers and the executives there, most of them atleast are not there for solving your problems, but for just a temporary job. so the executives at the first level of the call will try exciting things like cutting off the call if you shout, or putting you on hold and cutting off after 10 minutes.

If you survive through that, and call repeatedly, you will talk to some manager after sometime, and the manager will really most often resolve your complaint like a breeze... make sure you tell him that he take some effort to train his subordinates on the information on handling this complaint, so no other customer or not you again have to wait so long for a useful answer.

4.
Yes, If nothing helps.. or if you are frustrated beyond your limits, you raise a consumer complaint.

This below link will help you understand how to raise a consumer complaint in india, even provide you some links to find addresses of consumer redressal forums and courts near you.
ICRPC: Consumer Guidance for Filing Consumer Complaint with Consumer Court in India

I took you through these steps so long rather than telling you how you can raise a consumer complaint in court, because the process of making a case and submitting it to court and getting a resolution is for obvious reasons much much time-consuming than even the number of hours you are put on hold on a customer care call.

Also, you might be interested in website based consumer complaint forums.. like mouthshut.com, your own blog(if you are a popular blogger), or many other websites you can search from our favority on the dot search engine google.com

Finally, for more information on consumer redressal forums and processes, there are many useful links that will come up in a google search for "consumer india" or "consumer complaint india"

Important end note:
All the best.. but DONT give up.. or become tolerant to problems with services provided by indian companies or even indian government. There are always forums for redressal.. just because some people like us ignore the process because of laziness or willingness to spend the time seeing not much benefits off the result, we are encouraging the "bad service is not bad" attitude with indian companies, government and people.

Remember, more than you, your complaint and your struggle to resolve it is going to help future consumers from not having the same problem or at least not the same bad way like you had to go through.

India is a country that many developed countries are keeping a watch on, to see how fast we are growing, and how they can participate in reaping the goodies.. I am not saying this because I am Indian.

Yes, there are lot of problems in the country with growth and attitude in some sectors, that is at the very early stages of change.. call center services for example, agriculture for example. But, comparing what we have today with how we were 10 years back in a few industry sectors, it is quite a *Show* off growth.

And the growth has been a strong curve in Chennai.

The banking sector revamping from zero ATMs to countless ATMs of every bank in every street corner, the technology space out-growing expectations & growth targets year-on-year, the talent market being flooded with more and more skilled and attitudinal people, the quality of movies, TV programmes, the salary packet sizes these days, the retail market boom, everything just multiplying every other day.

You just sit idle doing nothing for a day in Chennai, you feel little strange and slightly left out, the very next day. I do. Though I don't sit idle for a whole day, I do feel a growing urge day by day seeing things changing around me, right from roads to buildings to new successful companies cropping up everywhere.

If you want to feel the same way, there's an easier way, rather than sitting idle at home... If you are in chennai, all you have to do is visit sathyam theatre complex every weekend, and you will see something about the theatre's infrastructure changed. They keep modifying things regularly. Rather than the theatre management being responsible for the changes, it is demand that makes them alter to people's needs and business's values.

It is this quick change and related process that is so interesting to note, happening in places where a decade ago change was not a managed process.

We all know that all our Indian TV channels, for popularity's sake, copy blockbuster Television program formats from the west, like "Who wants to be a millionaire", "Dancing with the stars", etc.,
But the interesting part is.. the tamil versions of the programmes have brought about a change in the way Chennaiites see society, their inhibitions towards protecting culture, their spending patterns, interests in dance / music, opening up to the outside world and accepting the goods of an open society... everything is changing slowly. Though we Chennaiites are accepting all these changes, we don't seem to be in a hurry and we are carefully and selectively working up the change.

Also, Chennaiite parents are known to pester children on studies and giving zero or less importance to co-curricular activities, sports etc., With figures of successful Indian sportsmen increasing by the day, and the way these television programmes make the other activities and careers rewarding as well, a sudden spurt in interest towards co-curricular activities and sports is seen, and children are learning people skills and life skills because of the open society. The already rich talent market is going to be super-rich in another 5 years in Chennai...because Chennai has always been a conservative society.

All these changes around me are so attractive to notice, that I am losing a lot of free time trying to.. understand.. admire.. how and why the changes are happening and what triggers it to happen quick.

A few months back I read in a blog (I forgot which one) that the United States government has changed its definition of India from a "Developing country" to "Transforming country". That acknowledges India's growth internationally.