Have you ever come across a scenario where a bank sends you a stiff letter asking you to come to the bank and close your account, else they will freeze it in 30 days. You have a good credit rating, and maintain enough balances in your account. Well read on for news on this ..
HDFC Bank, a leading bank in India, sent me a letter asking me to close the account within 30 days else they will lock the account. The letter was in such unfriendly terms, not giving me any option; and my first reaction was “What a customer unfriendly move!”
Background is, the bank is changing their own policies without evaluating the impact on the customer. I had a salary account with the bank due to my previous employer. When I quit the company, I asked the bank branch what I need to do ? The teller told me that this is HDFC bank account and will remain in place; After around an year, I got a letter stating that the bank has noticed that I do not regular salaries into the account, hence they are converting to a regular savings account, and the minimum balance changes to Rs. 5000 from 0 earlier. Fine. Now another year later, I get another letter stating that they have noticed that I am not getting salaries, and they have confirmed with the previous employer that I am no longer there, hence account must be closed. This got me steamed up, given my previous experience of confirming details with the bank.
So I went to the bank branch, and they asked me to go the branch where I had opened the account for closing (which is in another city). On the overall front, this experience showed a very unfriendly un-customer oriented nature of the bank, along with one hand of the bank not knowing what the other hand is doing.