HDFC Bank sucks...

..and the Reserve Bank of India Ombudsman Scheme is not much better either.

Previous posts about this here:
http://vk-writtenword.blogspot.com/search/label/hdfcsucks

I went to the Reserve Bank of India Ombudsman scheme to get this redressed and they ruled in favour of the bank. I'm not happy and I think they were wrong and didn't understand the details of the case. I'll stomach the decision but I'm glad I went through the process and pushed the matter to a conclusion.

To recap:
There were fraudulent charges on my credit card in April. These wern't taken off till November and after repeated calls and complaints. In the meantime, since they were not responding to repeated calls regarding the status of the fraudulent charges, I decided to stop making payments as I no longer had any faith that they would redress the matter, and they were charging me for the fraudulent charges also. At the same time, there was a separate issue where they turned on automatic withdrawal from my bank account for a cash loan that I had taken and continued to apply that direct withdrawal even after the loan had been paid off. They also have an interesting system where you can turn on the automatic withdrawal on the phone but you have to write or fax in to turn it off. They gave lots of instructions to turn it off through the online account none of which worked.
Overall a whole bunch of fines and late charges had piled up which they refused to withdraw. Oh well, I'll pay off and cancel the card and never use their services again. But wait -- that's expecting too much of them. I closed a bank account with them 2 years back but it stretched their capabilities too much to do it and the account is still alive and waiting to be misused.

Rudeness and harrassment from the customer service personnel trying to recover the money were in evidence right through my dealings with them, but an apology for the incredible delay in dealing with the matter was never ever forthcoming.