How corporations are resorting to cheating the customer to boost their bottom lines.

Companies across the globe are increasingly resorting to downright cheating when it comes to their bottom lines. Therefore you have increasing cases where banks are prompt to increase the interest rates on lending’s and reluctant to do the same for deposits held by them. Take for instance the case of home loans offered by ICICI and HDFC among other banks, every time the RBI tightens the liquidity in the market, both these banks are prompt in sending letters to all the loaners about the change in the installment or period of the loan. These banks hold huge deposits often held in small amounts. They make it very difficult the deposit holder to liquidate his deposit and renew the same at a higher rate. The concept of automatically increasing the rate of interest on deposits does not exist in the lexicon of these banks. I see no reason why fixed deposit holders should suffer when banks fail to increase the rate on deposits while calmly increasing them for the lenders.

Many banks charge a heft charge for returned instruments and make a huge profit out of this. There was a time, when bank would call you up and advise you that your account is having a shortfall and what you wanted to do to clear the presented instruments. All this civility has disappeared. Recently I had to suffer a charge of 300 for a returned cheque when the balance in my account was short by 50 rupees. And I had just the day before deposited an amount of 9000 in to my account. When confronted, the bank refused to take onus of informing the customer and was shameful enough to force the charge to my account. And this is a leading MNC bank based out of Hong Kong that I am talking about.

Direct debits or electronic transfers are another way that the banks are scamming you. Once you authorize a direct debit, the bank will promptly remove money from your account but will not transfer the same to the recipient till the last date draws near. You lose on interest; they gain by having a larger float of free capital. No wonder more and more banks want you to sign up for direct debit in cohorts with the service providers.

I have found that the co-operative banks will give you a much higher level of service than these so called MNC /International/Private banks but you run the risk of instability of these banks. This problem can be overcome by having a deposit of less than 1 lac per account, which is guaranteed by the Credit Guarantee Scheme.

Cheating the customer is the name of the game when it comes to the realm of credit cards. More often than not, if the card holder makes a payment directly to the bank (and not to a drop box from where it is collected and credited to your account via a third party) your payment is more likely to go missing than being credited to your account. Many banks routinely shred cheques received directly by them and then slap late fees on customers. Many customers just fail to take up the matter with the bank and this translates to free income for the bank.

For credit card holders the unwritten rule that should be followed is not to have your account with the same bank as that which has issued you the credit card. Credit card companies will often automatically debit your account and clean up your bank account if you default on credit card payments. The fact that the banks have the mandate to directly clean out your account actually make the credit card a secured credit line available at 13.5% per annum and you are paying up to 45% per annum for that. RBI continues to sleep over all these violations. The magic is in numbers, therefore when you receive a seemingly free credit card, beware of all the dirty tricks that the credit card company has in store for you. Because no matter that the credit card has come to you free, the issuer has ensured that he will be able to fleece you in some way or another.

Phone companies are also notorious for using foul methods of inflating your bill. Even an error of 10 per customer can net a company 1 Crore per month in free windfall and believe me they are just doing that. With no independent source of audit, these companies are getting away with murder. Companies and their captains speak so much for transparency in government, but ask them as to how transparent their own companies are and you will have a lot of red faces. Phone companies make it extremely difficult for you to surrender your connection. While they will sell you one through thousands of outlets, but you have to travel many a mile to surrender one. The moment you talk of signing off, they turn stone cold and want you to clear all their payments before you quit the service provider. And if you have a deposit with them and want that to be adjusted against the dues, they throw processes and procedure in your face and tell you that please wait for three to six months to receive your money back while you cough up their dues up front.

Reliance Energy is another company that does not fight shy of making a quick buck from its customers. Any delayed payment is promptly fined citing a MERC directive to do so while prompt payments hardly receive the promised incentive. I can vouch for this as I happened to make a double payment during a billing cycle which resulted in a credit outstanding in my account. Next month when I got a bill, I did not have to pay anything and as I had paid in advance, I expected to get an incentive for early payment, but none was forthcoming. Maybe and RTI application against Reliance Energy will reveal the statistics of delayed penalties and early incentives that the company has levied on its customers. With a customer base in excess of 4 million an error of 10 per customer can translate to 40 million of excess income, enough to boost the bottom line of the company.

Ask anyone on the street, do they trust Hutch, Airtel, BPL Mobile, Reliance Telecom, Reliance Energy, Tata Indicom, VSNL, etc with the billing and whether they believe that these companies are honest and you will get a resounding no as your answer.

All this is happening while authorities sleep or connive with these modern day thugs to rob and cheat you in broad daylight

Earlier you could fool the government and get rich by evading excise, customs, sales tax and other duties levied by them, now the government has smartened to these tricks, thus the corporate world has no option but to loot the common man through its bag of dirty tricks.