If someone offers you a free lifetime credit card and if it is SBI, then please please please for god’s sake do not ever accept the offer. I have already made a mistake by applying for the SBI card and I do not want you guys to make the same mistake again.

Here is my story:

I had applied for lifetime free SBI card though Lifestyle departmental stores. I used the card on few occasions and cleared my payment from time to time. At that time I was using SBI’s online facility to check my invoices because I was not getting invoices by post. But After sometime, the online site stopped accepting my username and password and new registration also did not work. After 4-5 months a person from SBI visited my place and asked for the payment. On inquiring, I was told that I have to pay some Rs. 590 as installment and my alleged pending payment was around Rs. 3,000.

After talking to the manager, I got to know that invoices were being sent to wrong address and this way the interest got added with the actual amount. The person apologized for the same and assured me that he will send fresh copy of invoice with correct amount within 2-3 days. But till date I have not received that! After 3-4 months, I started getting invoices with the same incorrect amount.

I called up customer care regarding this issue. I was told to get in touch with GE via email. (feedback.gesbi@ge.com). But instead of getting a proper reply, I received a reply after 20 days stating that they were not able to find my account information in their database.

During this period, I started getting harassing calls from Payment Department (Delhi) daily at around 9.30 AM. The calls did not stop despite explaining them the reason every time. After few days, I spoke to a person named Sumit and he assured me that I will have to pay just the actual pending amount i.e. Rs. 1468 and rest of the charges will be waived off as they were incorrect.

However, to my utter dismay this too did not help. The invoices with incorrect amount did not stop. I tried to explain my ordeal to customer support person again but the representative (Ashish Gupta) was not able to understand the issue and kept on saying that I will have to pay the whole amount.

To make the things worse, I got call from their payment department again, this time the lady was kind of rude. I explained the issue to her but she was just blaming everything on me saying it was my responsibility to pay the amount. But she did not say anything when I asked about their responsibility to send the invoice on time and to the correct address. She again asked me to pay the principal amount (Which I had paid last time), I asked told her to speak to Sumit (the guy who had asked me to principal amount of Rs. 1468 and they will waive off rest of the incorrect charges) but she said, she does not know him as they have 1000s of employees working there. I do not understand, if they have 1000 employees then why can’t they make a simple log of calls made to customers?

I have asked the lady to send me the statements again and I will pay off whatever is the principal amount is. But after that I am not going entertain these guys at all. Let them do whatever they want.

So moral of the story? NEVER EVER GO FOR SBI CARD, ONE OF THE WORST CREDIT CARD COMPANIES. TOTALLY UNPROFESSIONAL COMPANY WITH WORST CUSTOMER SUPPORT.

Update: If Bank fails to solve your queries then you can also send your complaints to Banking Ombudsman on RBI Website

Update: SBI had sent me legal notice to pay the dues, I also sent them legal reply (My friend, who is also Lawyer sent it on my behalf). The calls stopped suddenly and today I got the statement with all the charges reversed, the total amount payable was 0 (Zero). So finally, I managed to get rid of SBI card 🙂

Customer Support, Life, Mera India, Shameless Creatures