Thursday, September 6, 2007

My reply to Kotak's letter

Subject: Your letter dated August 31, 2007

To: Hemal Vakil //Kotak/Bank , Ajit Pillai //Kotak /Bank , Mayank Patel //Kotak /Bank , Narendra Agrawal //Kotak /Bank , Sujit Sood //Kotak /Bank , "ajay.sondhi@kotak.com" , "ajaykumar.kv@kotak.com" , "arpit.desai@kotak.com" , "c.jayaram@kotak.com" , "chetan.dave@kotak.com" , "dipak.gupta@kotak.com" , "gaurang.shah@kotak.com" , "jignesh.thakkar@kotak.com" , "rohan.shankar@kotak.com" , "swati.singh@kotak.com" , "uday.kotak@kotak.com" uday.kotak@kotak.com

September 3, 2007

Hemal Vakil,
Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd.,
Gr. Floor, Chandan House,
Opp. Abhijeet III, Near Mithakali Six road,
Navrangpura
Ahmedabad, 380009

Dear Sir,

Subject: Your letter dated August 31, 2007

Thank you for your reply. Your bank has finally had the courtesy to reply.

You have skirted the topic of my complaint completely. Your letter states that the window for online redemption was open on June 30, 2007. This statement is not true. You do not have any record of the attempts made by me right from June 25, 2007 because when I go to online requests and clicked on the redemption request, your software returns a simple error to the redeem request, “You have no online folios to redeem”.

This seems to have been fixed now when I attempted this now and the report today is as follows:

Redemption Request Reference No: 0309070072
Investment account No.
*****
Account Type
INDIVIDUAL
Scheme
Standard Chartered Enterprise Equity Fund - Growth
Folio No.
630025/67
Request Date & Time
03-09-2007 20:07:46
Process Date
04-09-2007
Redemption Details
Redeem All

This was not possible at the end of June, a fact that you would not be willing to acknowledge, but a simple check of redemption requests of this fund at that time will suffice.

The other issues that I have raised to Mr. Agarwal have not been answered. Please let me elaborate for the “n”th time:

Your bank branch in Jaipur made me run around three times to get this redemption request sorted out. Your call center directed me to the branch, your branch directed me back to the call center and even when I conferenced a call between your call center and Mr. Apoorv (not very sure of his name, but he is the guy who sits there with the “manager” tag right next to the counter, and they still couldn’t get this sorted out. I then called StanChart from my phone and they said I couldn’t redeem this in May.

I placed two redemption requests for my SCEEF to be redeemed and they were not carried out. The requests were placed on June 25, 2007 and June 29, 2007 which were not actioned. If this could only be done online, then your advisor should have told me so. When you accept a request, it implies that you will get it done. Today your software has accepted a request to redeem. Does this mean that this fund is redeemed? You have even given me a transaction id for the redemption and a cutoff time of 1300 hours for the same!
a) After this, I visited your branch and requested for an overdraft.
b) You emailed me saying this wasn’t possible
c) I had to visit you again and tell you that it was your bloody fault
d) You then agreed to give me money at 18% for 50% value
e) I had to write back saying I wasn’t willing to pay interest
f) You promised to get back
g) You got back saying 8% interest and 90% value
h) I wrote back for compensation
i) You got back saying 8% interest and 90% value

All this bloody batting/bowling session of yours takes 2 months? It takes you two months and 10 emails to your board of directors to get things done? Is this what you call service?

Your call center called me thrice in the next two weeks to tell me that I could redeem this by going into a branch. Thrice I had to tell them what they didn’t know, that this couldn’t be redeemed right now!!!

Your branch in Jaipur accepted a cheque over the counter drawn in my full name “*****”, but did not cash it even after three days. When I called, I was told that the cheque was going to be mailed back to me and I needed a declaration to get this cheque cashed saying that ***** can be expanded as *****. You didn’t even bother to call an outstation customer to tell him that his cheque couldn’t be cashed.

A cheque was returned on 14/07/2007, #55, and you didn’t call me for a referral. Agreed, it isn’t your job to call customers, but I used to call my relationship manager, Mr. Chetan Dave regularly, and he could have called me back. It was towards the insurance of my car. This cheque was cleared on Saturday, but it was entered into the system only on Monday. If it had featured on online banking on Saturday morning when I logged in, I would have rushed across to deposit cash and clear the cheque.

On 1/7/2007 you have debited me with nonmaintenance charges despite the fact that I have maintained over Rs 17000/- in my relationship with you. The least you could have done is reverse these charges. But no, this is your bread and butter and you wont.

Your Sr. Vice President, Mr. Prakash Naik, a loyal Kotak employee of 15 years made a threat stating “I am willing to spend even Rs 20000/- to 30000/- on this guy (me). I am very loyal to Kotak”. Please explain if this is how you handle customer complaints. When I asked Mr. Agarwal about this, he stated that this was probably because of the tone of my mails. Does this mean that a customer does not have the right to protest against shitty service?

Mr. Naik has been very busy calling my institute asking them to intervene. Did I open this account through the institute? Is this a salary account? What right do you have to call up people in my institution asking them to intervene? Don’t you have the balls to talk to a customer directly? Mr. Naik did not call me even once. I called him and asked him about all of the above and he says, “I am not willing to discuss it”. And this is the person you have appointed to head Gujarat…

I have asked for a compensation of Rs. 61000/- because my redemption request was not carried out on time. I was not able to subscribe to IPOs of DLF, Cairn, and a host of very good companies because you withheld my money from me. I do think that this is justified.

I used to be a loyal customer of Kotak and have referred two customers to you who have their banking and trading accounts with you, Mr. ***** and Mr. ***** with a net worth of over Rs 2 lakhs each. I used to go around telling people about your exceptional service. You have now pissed me beyond belief with your sheer lack of customer service. All the people who used to deliver service seem to have left your organization and all you are now is a shadow of your former customer-centric approach.

I have now set up two blogs to tell fellow customers and potential Kotak customers of my experience. Please do visit them.

http://kotakbank.blogspot.com/
http://kotakscam.blogspot.com/

My request is still the same. I want the charges reversed and the compensation of Rs. 61000/- credited to my account. I have been very fair with you and the least you can give me is the above.

*****