I experienced one more example of open loot enacted by Banks under the guise of hidden charges today, when I went to a Public Sector Bank (the infamous Punjab National Bank to be precise)!
I had opened an account in the name of my wife at the Bank in 2017 and did not operate it for a long time. We went today to close the account and while the entire interaction with PNB staff at the branch was completely unprofessional and exactly the way PSU Bank staff behaves, shall not discuss that experience in detail as of now as everyone is aware about the same and have accepted that as the base behaviour across the country.
However, while going through the account details, I observed that, there has been a regular quarterly entry of SMS charges being deducted from the account and after 4 years, the situation was such that, the net remaining amount in the account was lesser the original principal amount deposited 4 years back! Please refer the below extract of the statement to understand the details:
Now, in this higher infation scenario, when Bank interest is anyhow insufficient to take care of the inflationary increase on annual basis, its completely unacceptable that Banks take away your principal as well in the name of hidden charges!
The beauty of these charges are, we had never signed up for any such charges. While there has been regular deductions, we never received any SMS from the Bank in last 4 years (Not even to intimate that these charges are deducted). Therefore, this amounts to looting the customers in broad daylight and since this a PSU behemoth, protected by the Government, nothing is going to happen to it.
While I have no intention of fighting the Bank for these charges and have in fact, closed the account immediately, this is just to bring to light the way in which such loot is affected by PSU Banks all around.
It clearly seems that while the Bank staff in collusion with fraudsters like NM and others have cheated the Bank with billions of Rupees, this is a perfect way to recover the money from common people, the crores of common people / Bank customers who are at the mercy of these Banks. Just imagine, these Banks have crores of accounts and have various hidden charges to fleece the customers.
Hope Finance Ministry or RBI intervenes in the matter and stops this practice at the earliest. Also hope better sense prevails with these Banks and they invest enough in their Human Resources to behave better with their customers else, they have stiff competition on their heels from private & MNC Banks.
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