An engineer working for a private firm here was riding from work a few months when received a shocking SMS mentioning a transaction of €524 (around Rs. 37,736) in London from his Standard Charted Bank’s Manhattan silver card.
A flabbergasted K. Senthil Kumar rushed home and called up customer care to file a complaint to say the transaction was fraudulent and sought details.
The bank representatives promised to send the details him after 24 hours.
Dispute form
After waiting for two days, Mr. Kumar sent an email to the bank seeking the transaction details, reiterating that it was a fraudulent one as he had not made any such purchase from his card. He had also filed a dispute form to raise the complaint with the bank.
Taking cognisance of the complaint, the bank sought 45 days to complete its investigations. Another two months went by before the bank, on January 13, 2013, finally issued details of the transaction which did not match Mr. Kumar’s name and user ID.
He immediately filed another complaint stating that the transaction was fraudulent as his username and ID didn’t match in the transaction slip. He again sent a reminder on February 20 seeking updates on his complaints, but in vain.
Visa card
On April 5, he called up customer care to enquire about the status of his complaint, for which he was asked to raise another complaint. Finally, on April 18, the bank emailed him details of the transaction and said it had found that the transaction — to purchase a prepaid Visa card issued to one Chande Nasar to an address in London — was secure and asked him to pay up to avoid penalty. Mr. Kumar’s protestations that he had made no such transaction were futile: the bank asked him to file a police complaint if he has any dispute.
He did and now the Ashok Nagar police are on the job.
“We suspect either it could be part of an online fraud or some inside job,” said a police officer.
The bank insisted the transaction was secure and the password was the one the customer had set. “We confirmed that it was a valid transaction and hence we are unable to credit the amount,” a bank official said.
