Sr citizen alleges SBI A/c debited fraudulently

An instance has come to public notice here that moderate amounts of money were deducted from a customer’s Savings Bank accounts of the State of Bank of India (SBI) without any notice or knowledge of the customer.

According to reports, a pensioner has a SB account in the SBI Gandhinagar Branch. When he got Pass Book updated on July 5, he was surprised to see two postings of deduction on account of ‘SBI Credit Card’. The first deduction of Rs 74.24 was made on March 12, 2018 and the second deduction of Rs 27,120 on May 12, 2018 for Issuance of Credit Card even as no such card has ever been issued to him. The affected customer did not wish to be identified.

On July 6, the customer met the concerned Branch Manager and urged for a probe and return of money. Then on BM’s advice, the pensioner met officials of SBI Card Sales Division, Brahmapur and urged for relief, but in vain.

The SBI and the SBI Card Division also made it clear that the customer had never issued a Credit Card. Again on July 10, the pensioner lodged a verbal complaint through the SBI-Credit Card Desk of Gandhinagar Branch using SBI Helpline No 01139020202 and registered his complaint numbering 1356 2279 4948 with head office at Gurugaon, which asked to wait till July 17 for final investigation. As he didn’t receive any report, he lodged a verbal complaint over phone with the ASM, SBI-Credit Card Division, Berhampur Office and requested them to give him in writing that no Credit Card has ever been issued in favor of him nor any such card is pending till the date”, in order to enable be able to go for legal recourse, which too remain unheeded. The customer also discussed the matter with the Odisha SBI Card Sales Division Head, Bhubaneswar over phone and lodged a complaint by email seeking justice, but in vain. On July 29, the Odisha Sales Head of the SBI Card over phone said that he is receiving 300 such mails every day and cannot remember every case and asked the pensioner to explain the incident from square one. This attitude shocked the pensioner who is running from pillar to post for a month to get back his money.

Again, the helpless pensioner lodged complaint through email to CEO, SBI Card and the RBI, Ombudsman on July 27 and to the Chairman, SBI July 28 seeking justice. He was yet to get any response.

“When the SBI and the RBI don’t have any mechanism to detect such fraudulent deduction of hard-earned money, the Government should immediately stop the system of issuing Credit Card to customers,” demanded he.

The pensioner said he would move the matter to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) he doesn’t get relief soon.