HSBC Credit Card and the unending trauma

These are the details of my experience as a HSBC Credit Card holder.

You can help me and possibly many others like me by circulating this link, taking the time to read this post, and advising me on what are my options now.

If you are the independent type who believes in not learning from other people’s experiences, please continue using your HSBC Credit Card.

26^th April 2009

After a long day out the previous day, as I was keeping away all the shopping and arranging my bag-I notice that my credit card pouch is missing.

I go down, check in the car, all around the house and then not to take any risks, call up the Banks.

ICICI assures me there has been no misuse, blocks the card.

HSBC-yes there has been a series of transactions-of amounts adding up to approx 10K,, blocks the card and advices me to log a complaint with the police and drop a copy of that complaint to the nearest branch or ATM.

I drop everything I was doing to rush and do all that.

I couldn’t submit the papers to HSBC because there is no-one at the Branch on a Sunday and I was not comfortable dropping them at the ATM collection box.

//They have delayed picking up my bill payments at least 3-4 times, and have also added late payment charges, finance charges and taxes on those charges.

Yes they reverse the charges if you call and fire them and spend about 20-40 minutes each time. On the fourth instance I had asked them why they do it then-just pushing their luck and hoping we pay up?

Of course not Ma’am it is all system generated.//

I never knew how this term will come back to haunt me…

27^th April 2009:

I call up office, reschedule work because I am going to be late and am at HSBC, M.G. Road Bangalore Branch at sharp 10.00 am (And I thought only Govt. offices opened after 10). There are two employees of the Bank smoking outside a locked door-Ma’am today is a holiday-it’s Basavraja Jayanti (or something similar).

Oh but all offices I know of are working, the kids are at school……anyway, since you are here, can’t you just accept my papers…

No Ma’am you have to submit it at the counter, or you can drop it in the collection box

Heck, I’ll have to take time off tomorrow also, but no, I am not risking the drop-box.

28^th April 2009:

Again a round of explanations and I leave office early to arrive at the same bank at 5.00 pm-and learn that they close customer hours at 4.00pm. Oh I am so sorry,( I never thought a Multinational Private Bank would do that) anyway I just need to give you these papers….

I think it is enough to say I have had much more professional experiences in our much maligned “sarkari” departments.

I am pointed towards the drop-box, I recall my experiences, and decide to take a half-day off the next day and come back.

29^th April 2009:

I finally get to a collection counter, where the guy is not interested in listening to me or looking through the papers. I insist on a receipt; he stamps the photocopies of my complaint and the only response I am able to get out of him is that they’ll investigate and get back in 30-45 days. I am thrilled I finally did it!!!!!

27^th July 2009:

I have been calling HSBC customer-care every week…

• Ma’am your card is still under investigation.. please call us in 5 working days……….
• Ma’am the bill is System Generated.
• Yes Ma’am you can delay payment for now. Yes the charges are System Generated— these will be reverted…
• Please wait for the investigation to be over……..
• Yes Ma’am, it’s still under investigation, I have logged a fresh complaint, please note down your complaint number and call us after 5 working days……….

On the other hand, HSBC had generated three monthly bills for the disputed amount levying the finance charges, the late payment charges, the taxes on the charges, the fine for not paying the minimum amount and the collection department of HSBC has been hounding me to the point that I am heading towards a nervous breakdown and recurrent asthma attacks.

I was getting an average of 5 calls per day and they were really nasty……..

• Yes, the System has generated my number among the defaulters…
• No, they do not have any “System Generated” update from investigation department…could I fax them the details..

I faxed the entire set of documents to a number given by the collection department of HSBC, and to another number for Credit Card products that I found on the HSBC website…….

• I get more calls……no they have not received the fax, neither has calling customer care again helped….

I fax the papers again……

• The calls continue……..

I threaten to go to the police and report them for harassment….

• I am very sorry, the guy changes his tone, but Ma’am your number has come to the collection department because you haven’t paid the minimum amount due…….
• Yes, I know the details, but Ma’am we are not even dialing the numbers manually, it is System Generated..
• No Ma’am, I cannot update it my end…..yes you know what he said.

Meanwhile………

• I also wrote to the Nodal Officer for customer grievances…the only email id I found on the HSBC website.
• I got a System Generated response saying I would get an update in two working days.
• After 6 days I wrote back asking for the update.
• I got the same System Generated response saying I would get an update in two working days.
• Same response on the investigation from the customer care number.

Isn’t it quite like the Gabbar Singh sequences where he sets a prisoner free to run for his life and sets the dogs and the bullets after him?

What can I do to make them stop? To make them tell me what they have been investigating for the last three months? To make sure others don't have to go through a similiar experience?

Of old friends and new..

Elena woke up in tears: Mamma, I dreamt that you had changed my school. I never want to change my school-I will lose all my friends……

History repeats...Yeah, I know

My Mom forcefully changed my school in 11^th Standard-because my school did not have the science-maths combination, she wanted me to study. As I didn’t want to study anything, the combo just didn’t matter, but my friends did-so much, yet being a wimp whenever faced with emotional blackmail, I gave in.

I hated everything about the new school, but most of all, I missed my old friends-the ones I had been with for the last ten years. I did my best to be rational, level headed, practical….etc. etc.. for a month.

Then I rode my moped to my old school (wearing the wrong uniform) and went and met all my friends, teachers, and the Principal.

Yes, it was one of my infamous U-turns. I felt so bad about my parents wasting, all the money on admission, uniforms, books etc, that I did study Maths privately, and managed to get through Engineering-but I couldn’t ever leave my school and my friends for that…….

So how could I convince Elena?

I told her about the mice and the cheese and the need to keep moving on.

About how we make new friends as we keep moving and how we can always stay in touch with the ones who fly away.

And what about the ones we lose along the way?

Yes we lose, we miss, we cry, but don’t they say that the one, who doesn’t fly back to you, was never yours anyway!

Never one to miss an opportunity, she agreed: Ok, but will you let me create an account on Facebook?

Where did that come from?

But I think she got what I was trying to say!

Inconvenient Truths

The awkward questions.

My younger kid is always full for them, for starters:
What is S**?

Me trying to be correct without being candid:
It means-Male or Female, Boy or Girl

My elder daughter, an old soul who knew what made adults uncomfortable and never asked us any of these questions, giggled:
Mamma she wants to know the other meaning, the one which people do……..

I gasped: And just what is that?

I had to confirm what she knew, she’s just turned nine.

Elena: Oh Mamma, of course you know, all parents do….
and she refused to go into explanations

Shaken and determined to continue when Aurora was not around, I change the subject, for the moment.

Princess Aurora, obviously did not stop there.

Another day at the dining table:

Aurora: I will not force my children to eat Sambar.

I at my most formidable: That’s a long time away, please finish yours.

Aurora, determined to change the subject: Why is it a long time away?

I refuse to be distracted: Please take a spoonful, your mouth is empty

Aurora: A five year old girl can get pregnant, you know.

Me finally shocked into forgetting the Sambar: Of course not!!!!!!!! Who told you that?

Aurora putting down her spoon relieved at having Mom on a safer topic:

Oh just some friends, told me that. But I guess they were just fooling me.

Warming on to her subject and discretely pushing her food a little further off

I didn’t believe them and told them you have to be grown up and married to get pregnant
she continues righteously…

A smothered giggle, from my ninety (oops nine) year old…

Trying to keep her parents speechless long enough to flee, the princess climbs down her chair and continues:

But then that means Maami would be pregnant now…

The Ninety (no way can she be nine) year old has had enough:

Oh come on, you can just take Ipill and not get pregnant.
Mamma, this girl really doesn’t know anything!!!!

//I swear I have read a lot of on how to explain facts to your kids, and I was all ready to do it when they entered their teens. But now??

Phew!!

I am not sure what I find more unnerving-Aurora’s questions or Elena’s answers//

...do not bring us to the test

I was a bad student. The kind who do everything but study all through the year. But I was held up as a role model to the rest of the class and my cousins (and heartily resented for it), because I was very good at exams.

I studied the examination system more seriously than my books. My success belonged more to strategizing and sheer luck than slogging-smart working as it is called these days. Yes, I seriously worked hard at getting marks, because my grades did matter a lot to me.

And like most parents, I resolved I would not bring up my daughters to do the same.

With them, I always emphasized that learning is more important than “mugging up and coughing out”. I’d prefer that they did reasonably well on their own, than “coming first” with spoon-fed answers and I never asked the teacher their “rank” in class compared to the others.

Yet, when Elena showed me her test answer papers with 23½ out of 25 in four out of five of them-I couldn’t help asking:

Why? When you know everything?

These are just test marks, I do know the answers and that is more important.

So why didn’t you just check the paper before handing it in? These are just careless mistakes that you could have corrected.

I had to go for choir practice so I finished as fast as I could.

Looking at my expression, she sat down to explain:

Mamma, these tests keep happening all around the year, but the Speech day happens only once. Also these marks are not so important, because I do know everything. My Ma’am also knows that I know.

A theatrical pause and then the punch line:

And you know Mamma, there are so many kids in my class who have actually Failed!
Unsaid: See, you lucky you are? And stop cribbing about the 1½ points.

I know she is right.

But the Mom in me still wants her to do better. Am I wrong?

As you speak, so you become...

Are you a Punjabi?

My mom-in-law asked one of the kids’ friends.

No, I am English.

No way, my mil insisted, tell me what language your parents speak in when they are at home.

Oh, they speak English and Hindi. They speak in Punjabi only with my grandmother.

There, I told you-this means you are a Punjabi.

The five year old clarified furiously:

No, It means my Biji is a Punjabi, I am English and my parents are Hindi, English and Punjabi!

My daughters speak Hindi (tinged with Punjabisms) with their “North-Indian” friends, English in school and with all other friends, and Bengali with grandparents. With us, they use all three.

They also sprinkle their sentences with quite a few Tamil expressions, learnt from the “day-care aunty”, Telegu words gleaned from the maid who works there, and a lot of Kannada absorbed from all around.

I wonder what they are…

abracadabra

No matter how fiercely you believe in it, a dream is a dream. When the morning alarm rings, you have to wake out if it and start your day.

Is that how a kid feels when she wakes up to the fact that fairies exist only between the covers of books and Santa cannot be real?

I saw it happening with Elena.

How can Santa keep a track on how good each kid in the world was? How could he keep updated on all the changing addresses and reach every home in one night (that too riding on reindeers). How can he enter ours without the proverbial chimney? In fact Santa sounded decidedly witchy---quite like Loverna. OK-it had to be Mom.

Yet, she announced, she would continue to believe in the magic-because she wanted her gift.

She continued to believe in the Tooth fairy too.

It was only when the distracted Tooth fairy forgot to exchange her tooth for a coin one night that she began to get suspicious. We blamed the traffic and the rains (as we do for so many things) and she agreed to give the fairy another chance. The part-time fairy added yet another reminder on her phone and actually followed through. Yet the seeds of doubt grew roots-the fairy acted so much like Mom.

I knew she was convinced when she came home from school and said: You know Mamma, Tara broke her tooth on Monday and it was Friday by the time the Tooth fairy came and left her a coin.

Oh great! Another Mom like me. And I know why she was telling me this.

Anyway, she had to know one day.

Aurora broke her first tooth today!

I quickly added a reminder and started hunting for change (if not my wand).

Yeah, she’ll soon grow out of it, but I want her to believe in the magic for some more time.