WE talk money with working professionals. As part of this series, we spoke to a marine engineer who was lured into opening a bank account with false promises.
Name: Krishnan Subramaniam
Age: 35
Where I stay: Mumbai
What I do: Marine Engineer
Never trust an extra attractive financial scheme. Ask Krishnan Subramaniam. He would know. He opened a bank account with Citibank because it offered him a zero balance scheme and free RBI bonds worth Rs 10,000.
Sounds too good to be true? Right. It was not true.
The Subramaniams were approached by a person who claimed to be a Citibank agent. He told them that if they opened a savings account with Citibank they would get RBI bonds worth Rs 10,000 free. He also asked for a cheque of Rs 10,000 as minimum amount to open the account. He promised to convert their account into a zero balance account within days of opening it.
"The only incentive to open the account was the RBI bond promised by the agent," Krishnan says ruefully.
"We had a look at the terms and conditions of the forms we were filling up at the time of opening the account. But it had no mention about the bonds. When we asked the agent, he insisted we would get the bonds even though it was not mentioned anywhere in the form," says Krishnan. "And when we asked for a written statement for that promise, the agent refused to give it to us."
That did not sound a warning bell in Krishnan's mind. He went ahead and signed up. After three months, the ghost of his mistake caught up with him. He says, "We got a call from the Citibank call centre informing us about a quarterly balance of Rs 10,000 that we were supposed to maintain. That is when we realised that the account had not been converted into a zero-balance one. We tried contacting the agent, but he was unavailable. We told the call centre executive that the agent had promised to convert our account to a zero-balance account. We contacted the bank, which said they were not giving any RBI bonds to anyone."
The bank washed their hands off the matter claiming they outsourced account openings to a franchisee or a selling agent.
And that they had nothing to do with agents's promises. They insisted they didn't know anything about the transaction. Moreover, the agent had also left the organisation and there was nothing anybody could do to help the Subramaniams.
So what did they do?
"We stopped transacting with Citibank. We withdrew all our money. We didn't even bother to close the account; we just left it as it is. We must have transacted with them for about six months," Krishnan says.
What could the Subramaniams have done to avoid this situation?
i. Take every financial offer that looks too-good-to-be-true with a pinch of salt.
ii. Do some research to find out if such a scheme really exists.
iii. If agents refuse to give promises in writing, back off immediately.
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