BENGALURU: One was a ‘Setty’ and the other was a ‘Shetty’ with an ‘h’. Both first names were same —Manjunatha. But ‘Setty’ had to go through a harrowing time for nearly three years, thanks to a bank’s ‘apathy’.
H Manjunatha Setty, a salaried employee of a private firm and a resident of Chikka Banaswadi, had a rude New Year’s shock in 2017. An amount of Rs 1.14 lakh was debited from his credit card account, said to have been transacted for a New Year’s party at a star hotel about which he had no clue at all. The man who had actually organised the party and used his credit card for that amount was Manjunatha Shetty.
Setty — whose credit limit was just Rs 50,000 — was asked to pay interest for overshooting his limit over all these months. The total amount he was asked to pay by the HDFC Bank’s Bellandur branch was Rs 1.81 lakh. Setty then moved the Bangalore District Consumer Redressal Forum.
The Bangalore District Consumer Redressal Forum, comprising president D R Venkatasudarshan and Member L Mamatha, ordered the bank not only to refund the amount (Rs 1.14 lakh) debited from his credit card account but to also pay him Rs 40,000 as compensation towards mental agony undergone by him, besides Rs 5,000 as cost of litigation.
It also ordered that Setty was entitled to 15 per cent interest per annum from January 1, 2017 — the date on which the amount was wrongly debited from his credit card account, till the date of actual payment.
The forum said it could have been a matter of common sense for even an ordinary prudent person to wonder as to how the complainant, a salaried employee having a credit limit of only Rs 50,000, would spend Rs 1.14 lakh for a New Year’s event at a star hotel.
The forum observed that the bank had even failed to realise the difference in card numbers and the validity periods on the cards of Setty and Shetty, besides the signature of the card holder who signed the Credit Card Authorization which was different from the complainant’s signature. The credit card number issued to complainant Setty ended with ‘9118’, while that of Shetty who actually used the card, ended with ‘7410’.
“This clearly showed that the card holder Manjunatha Shetty who transacted with the bank is altogether different from Manjunatha Setty H,” the forum said.It observed that the bank had not bothered to correct its own mistake in spite of repeated requests or reminders from Setty.
Instead the bank went on adding charges, interest over interest. “This, in our view, certainly amounts to serious shortcomings or inadequacies of performance by the bank,” the forum said.“The bank also seems to have ignored to note that value of alleged transaction of Rs 1.14 lakh exceeded the credit card limit of Rs 50,000 of the complainant,” the forum said.