Here's some nuanced advice guaranteed to bring you peace and prosperity, advice which no one else will probably give you.
Do not be a credit card customer AND a moron. You can be one or the other but not both.
There. I have got it off my chest. The world knows now and is already a better place. As you heave a sigh of relief, dear reader, you are probably wondering how I was enlightened. Well, here is the story
I am a customer of ICICI bank for their credit card. I have been a customer of ICICI bank for many things (including a demat account, a trading account, a savings bank account and a current account) and with great reluctance, have had to let go of each one of these because I would steadily find myself losing out to the sharp minds in that fine organization. With artistic flair and surgical precision, clauses, terms and conditions that they inserted into these relationships would quietly but surely ensure that they eventually got the better of me. If ICICI bank gets into a revolving door after you, and I mean this as a compliment, you can rest assured they will emerge ahead of you.
I sportingly admitted defeat. It was a fair fight after all. They with their IIM Mbas and NLS lawyers, me with my, well, wits about me. I let them go, one after the other. But I hung on to the credit card. What, I figured, could go wrong? First, I had had it for nearly a decade and second, all I had on it was my cell phone bill payments which, to tell you the truth, I had no clue how to change to another subscriber while discontinuing this one. I had visions of two companies now paying the same cell phone bill to Airtel, resulting, of course, in the latter getting fat and lazy and probably acquiring a drinking habit. I love airtel dearly, as I would a child reared on my own money (which it is, sort of) and I wouldn't want it going to seed. The credit card stayed.
So when one lovely December morning I got a call from some jolly old chaps purporting to be from the credit card department of the ICICI bank, I answered with nary a premonition of danger.
The jolly chaps were worried. My reward points were expiring, they told me, and the only way to salvage anything out of it would be to buy this gift hamper containing shoes, sunglasses, a watch and some tremendously valuable discount coupons from a company called Deal@Once. I did find the thing rummy - they were asking me far too many questions, for one - but the jolly chap sent me an authentication message or something which seemed to come from ICICI, my trusted friend for so many years, and I fell for it. One thing led to another and before I knew what was happening, I had agreed to receive their gift hamper in return for 6999 reward points which were going to expire anyway.
In the course of all this, I ended up giving them my credit card details and authorising the transaction - because I am a moron - all the while thinking I was authorizing the deduction of 6999 reward points from my account. And got a mildly nasty shock when I found it charged in my credit card bill in the good name of Amtec Engineers of New Delhi.
I checked on the net and found that this scam has been going on for a good 6 or 8 months, if not more, and several of those victims were ICICI Bank customers. (To be fair, there are customers of other banks as well)
I called up ICICI cards and whined but the lady at the other end was stern and unsympathetic. She told me to file a police complaint at the nearest police complaint and go cry someplace else, because SHE wasn't giving me any money back.
So that is where the matter stands. I plan to go and file my police complaint. I was worried that the policeman might laugh so hard upon hearing my complaint that he might fall off his chair and hurt himself, making me liable to the charge of injuring a police officer on duty but a senior legal mind assures me that there is no law which will punish me for that, though he privately admitted that if more complaints like mine make it to local police stations, they might have to enact one.
So here things stand. It's not ICICI bank's fault of course that I am a moron but I wish their fine minds would try to actively go after these fraudsters - after all, this has been happening for months now - instead of having conferences, meetings and off-sites devoted to inserting clauses terms and conditions in to their account agreements. We ARE morons, we customers, but we are God's children too. Aren't we?
Here are some of the other sad stories
https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/icomplaintsin-online-consumer-complaints-7526159/dealatoncecom-credit-card-fraud-deal-at-once-2815285843
http://www.icomplaints.in/credit-card-fraud-by-calling-through-mobile-027633.html
http://www.scamadviser.com/is-dealatonce.com-a-fake-site.html
Do not be a credit card customer AND a moron. You can be one or the other but not both.
There. I have got it off my chest. The world knows now and is already a better place. As you heave a sigh of relief, dear reader, you are probably wondering how I was enlightened. Well, here is the story
I am a customer of ICICI bank for their credit card. I have been a customer of ICICI bank for many things (including a demat account, a trading account, a savings bank account and a current account) and with great reluctance, have had to let go of each one of these because I would steadily find myself losing out to the sharp minds in that fine organization. With artistic flair and surgical precision, clauses, terms and conditions that they inserted into these relationships would quietly but surely ensure that they eventually got the better of me. If ICICI bank gets into a revolving door after you, and I mean this as a compliment, you can rest assured they will emerge ahead of you.
I sportingly admitted defeat. It was a fair fight after all. They with their IIM Mbas and NLS lawyers, me with my, well, wits about me. I let them go, one after the other. But I hung on to the credit card. What, I figured, could go wrong? First, I had had it for nearly a decade and second, all I had on it was my cell phone bill payments which, to tell you the truth, I had no clue how to change to another subscriber while discontinuing this one. I had visions of two companies now paying the same cell phone bill to Airtel, resulting, of course, in the latter getting fat and lazy and probably acquiring a drinking habit. I love airtel dearly, as I would a child reared on my own money (which it is, sort of) and I wouldn't want it going to seed. The credit card stayed.
So when one lovely December morning I got a call from some jolly old chaps purporting to be from the credit card department of the ICICI bank, I answered with nary a premonition of danger.
The jolly chaps were worried. My reward points were expiring, they told me, and the only way to salvage anything out of it would be to buy this gift hamper containing shoes, sunglasses, a watch and some tremendously valuable discount coupons from a company called Deal@Once. I did find the thing rummy - they were asking me far too many questions, for one - but the jolly chap sent me an authentication message or something which seemed to come from ICICI, my trusted friend for so many years, and I fell for it. One thing led to another and before I knew what was happening, I had agreed to receive their gift hamper in return for 6999 reward points which were going to expire anyway.
In the course of all this, I ended up giving them my credit card details and authorising the transaction - because I am a moron - all the while thinking I was authorizing the deduction of 6999 reward points from my account. And got a mildly nasty shock when I found it charged in my credit card bill in the good name of Amtec Engineers of New Delhi.
I checked on the net and found that this scam has been going on for a good 6 or 8 months, if not more, and several of those victims were ICICI Bank customers. (To be fair, there are customers of other banks as well)
I called up ICICI cards and whined but the lady at the other end was stern and unsympathetic. She told me to file a police complaint at the nearest police complaint and go cry someplace else, because SHE wasn't giving me any money back.
So that is where the matter stands. I plan to go and file my police complaint. I was worried that the policeman might laugh so hard upon hearing my complaint that he might fall off his chair and hurt himself, making me liable to the charge of injuring a police officer on duty but a senior legal mind assures me that there is no law which will punish me for that, though he privately admitted that if more complaints like mine make it to local police stations, they might have to enact one.
So here things stand. It's not ICICI bank's fault of course that I am a moron but I wish their fine minds would try to actively go after these fraudsters - after all, this has been happening for months now - instead of having conferences, meetings and off-sites devoted to inserting clauses terms and conditions in to their account agreements. We ARE morons, we customers, but we are God's children too. Aren't we?
Here are some of the other sad stories
https://www.bloglovin.com/blogs/icomplaintsin-online-consumer-complaints-7526159/dealatoncecom-credit-card-fraud-deal-at-once-2815285843
http://www.icomplaints.in/credit-card-fraud-by-calling-through-mobile-027633.html
http://www.scamadviser.com/is-dealatonce.com-a-fake-site.html
6 comments:
Perhaps, you could contact the nodal officer of the bank since your complaint has not been addressed by the call centre. In ICICI's case, they have a level even before the Nodal oficer.
http://www.icicibank.com/complaints/complaints.page
The grievance redressal mechanism through the nodal officer of the bank goes upto RBI,if not resolved by the bank. you may find the bank more responsive through this channel as its a process mandated by RBI
Good luck.
I used to be a credit card customer once and a moron. HDFC Bank and its recovery agent taught me the good lesson for a nominal fee of rs 2000/- (thats the amount that they swindled out of me).
But if someone charges your credit card and does not provide you the goods/services, you can always reverse the charges no?
did you find out and complain about the transaction before the billing cycle? if so ICICI is bound by statues to provide you relief, otherwise no.
Also, These scamsters are untraceable or at least not so easy to catch.
Rule of thumb, Never, Never ever , Never (in Arnab's style) give your CC details on the phone or for that matter send across in a mail... in case if you need to mail your details to your near ones, use multiple means with each means carrying part of the info.
Oh Naren! You make you want to cancel my cards immediately. I use them all over the place :(
Hope you find relief!
Both your previous posts - the one on smoking and this one on credit cards really touched a chord. It is amazing how you manage to incorporate self-effacing humor in dealing with such serious subjects.
I hope your CC story has a Happy Ending. Or at least not an unhappy ending. Always look forward to reading more of your stuff. Happy New Year!
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