BENGALURU: An unauthorised debit of a small sum of Rs 24.78 from his savings account recently after he used the ATM of a different bank made a senior government official get it reimbursed a week later through persistent efforts with bank officials.
The official insists it was not about the money but the fact that thousands in the lower income group could similarly lose money and be unaware of how to get it refunded.
Under RBI guidelines, an account holder can withdraw cash five times a month free of charge from ATMs of their bank and thrice from other banks without any charge.
Manjunath Swamy (name changed on request) withdrew Rs 5,000 using his Canara Bank debit card from a Bank of Baroda ATM in Raja Rajeshwari Nagar on February 10 morning.
He told TNIE, “Immediately after the transaction, Rs 24.78 was deducted from my account as handling charges for using another bank. This is completely unauthorised as it was the first time I was using my debit card in a long time.”
The next day Swamy sent an e-mail to Allinder Kumar, Chief Manager of Canara Bank’s Basaveshwara Road branch, where he had his savings account. Two days later (Feb 13), the customer shot off another mail to the manager stating that despite multiple calls and his previous mail, the money was not reimbursed. He received a response stating that the matter had been escalated and referred to the technical team.
On February 15, Swamy sent an e-mail to the CEO of Canara Bank’s head office at JC Road explaining the issue and the absence of a satisfactory response from his local branch. “An hour later, the money was fully reimbursed to my account. I was first reimbursed Rs 21 and then Rs 3.78 which was the reversal of the GST collected on it, messages sent to me revealed,” he added.
Swamy repeatedly stressed that he was making an issue of the small sum so that a nationalised bank like Canara Bank does not repeat it with any other customer. “The people who use ATMs presently are those who do not use smartphones (which facilitate UPI mode of payment) like flower sellers, roadside vendors, some drivers and those involved in domestic work. How will these people be able to send mails and call up branch managers in pursuit of such unfair deductions. It is on behalf of them that I decided to take up this issue so that they do not suffer when such sums get deducted,” he explained.
Asked about it, Alinder Kumar told TNIE, “We acknowledged the customer’s mail the same day and escalated it to our technical team. We have reimbursed the amount and apologised for the incident too which happened due to some technical issues.” He added Canara Bank will take care to ensure such an incident does not occur in future.