What you get instead are hidden
costs for supposedly myriad services, most of which don’t seem to exist.
One leading new generation
private bank does not disburse cash other than through ATM/debit card
withdrawals. Yet it charges Rs.1,000 annually for issue of the debit card, on top
of keeping the minimum average balance of Rs.10,000 for a basic savings bank
account for a customer.
Why choose such a bank? Because
other banks, though with lower minimum balance requirements, are worse when it
comes to customer service.
I credited a couple of cheques to
my pension account with the SBI drawn on another local PSB branch on November
6. While one of the instruments for Rs.10,000 got credited on the same day, the
other for Rs.70,000 was credited only six days later after relentless pursuit. A
complaint email gets the standard response: “This is a system generated
response. Your complaint takes 48 hours to respond. Please do not reply.”
