Government banks need to get their act together

Posted on June 15, 2011 by Sushubh Mittal

I found out today that Punjab and Sind Bank would not update a passbook of an account that is connected to another branch.

The branch was computerized. The guy I talked to had the passbook format printer so it was pretty obvious that he was not going to update it by hand from data in some register or something.

This is pretty insane for 2011. The whole idea of passbook is insane today. But I sort of appreciate it looking at what the banks today charge for printing your statements if you need a hard copy.

I would have to visit the branch in Delhi to get the thing updated now. What a freaking disaster.

Standard Chartered India does something good and bad

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Sushubh Mittal

I have been very annoyed with the way Standard Chartered India provides online access to your banking details.

They still do not provide a quick way to access your statements that are older than 90 days.

However, they have taken some steps which helps. But only partially.

They have added a new section to their backend named eStatements. As the name suggests, this provides access to your statements in PDF format.

This is pretty cool and handy.

The problem?

Only the last 12 months worth of statements are accessible.

You can view the eStatements that we have sent to you during the last 12 months below. If your e-statement registration is less than a year old, eStatements sent to you after the date of registration will be available. To download the eStatement for a particular month, please click on the month. Credit Card eStatements for last 12 months will be available from 1-Nov-2009 onwards.

I have no idea what is wrong with providing eStatements for the entire period the account has been active. How much space is that going to consume? A couple of megabytes for each customer?

When you charge 800 rupees per year for a debit card and have a reputation for being a premium banking service provider… I guess this is what I get in return.

ATM Headache

Posted on May 20, 2010 by Sushubh Mittal

A quick question. How many of you have faced problems where the ATM machine did not give out any money. You receive a transaction rejected message. But the money was still deducted from your account. And it was not reversed back automatically. So you had to raise the problem with the bank. Which took as long as 5-6 months to fix the glitch. That too even after receiving a complaint from the consumer court?

State Bank of India has done it two times to my dad.

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Standard Chartered India CONTINUES to annoy me

Posted on April 25, 2010 by Sushubh Mittal

Update: Alright. Here is what I have realized now. Standard Chartered India only provides soft copy option for the last six months. To get statements from before that period, you would need to ask for hard copies that costs Rs. 150 plus taxes PER MONTH. Freaking awesome. Standard Chartered India has just lost one customer.

I asked them to send me soft copies of my statements on my email ID. And this is what I receive:

I wish to inform you that the statement for a period beyond three months you will need to place a request and a duplicate statement will be sent to you at a charge. The duplicate statements are charged at Rs.110.00 per statement, for a period pertaining to less than three months old and Rs.165.45 per statement for a period more than three months old.

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