ChinmayC Blog

The State Bank of India ( SBI ) has always been an active ingredient in our generational bloodstream—like in that of almost all of India’s state and central government employees and their families who have either salary accounts or pension accounts or deposit accounts or investment accounts or all the beneficiary accounts required by the governments to enjoy the benefits of various schemes. No doubt, the pressure on the bank has always been immense across the nooks and corners of the country, impacting the performances of the various branches. But the bank has been marching well with the digital developments over the years and for many of us the branch visits have been reduced to the minimum. Besides, the SBI’s net-banking site which is indeed a very secure and user-friendly, and the YONO App have done their bits to ease the hassles of the accountholders. However, despite the tremendous advancement of banking a few rickety old rules or diktats that we’d refer to as ‘ structural r...

It has become, particularly after the pandemic-driven desperation, extremely unsavory, unhealthy and irritating to avail of or buy any service or product from any service provider or business unit, ranging from an innocuous cup of tea to medical services, because once you do so which you cannot possibly avoid the marketing hawks of the concerned agencies will keep on bombarding you with text messages, WA posts, emails and also voice interactive or even live voice calls with no deadline for a most desired end, perhaps it's set to continue till the end of you or of the world! They holler and hammer you to rate them, recommend them, fill up feedback forms, take surveys and what not, and of course to continue buying from them. This is aside from the hawks of the bank/insurance/financial agencies who stop at nothing to lure you in, offering cards and personal loans even to hapless senior citizens, and the infuriatingly incessant reminders to pay up regular dues from about a month before...

The calls never stop. They’re ruthlessly regular as always even if you’re going through a huge personal crisis or that you’ve been rendered ineligible for most of the offers in circulation due to various reasons. And I don’t blame the ‘casuals’ desperately trying to augment their measly income with the commissions cum incentives that they hope to earn by getting the customer’s consent for a personal loan or a deposit/investment scheme or a pre-approved credit card. In fact, I always have sympathy and understanding for them; that I get angry most of the times is a part and parcel of the hazardous virtual games being played in abundance nowadays. This time, for a change, it was a male voice that addressed me in all possible politeness. But he sounded weary and lazy, perhaps frustrated by the endless calls from his end since morning without any tangible progress. “Sir, I’m calling from the xyz finance company. If you can spare a moment, please!” For a change, again, I decided not to be...

We’d been growing up with the dictum that ‘everything is fair in love and war’; however, in view of our increasingly awesome experience with the phenomenon of digital marketing we urgently need to revise the dictum to ‘everything is fair in love, war and marketing’, for our own solace. I’m not at all exaggerating this. In spite of being very particular about paying all your dues on time all your life and enjoying a healthy credit score as a result your service providers shall not cease to hound you all the time for payment. They’d start at least a week before the approaching payment-due date and their irksome and utterly useless verbosity will flood all your resources of a digital existence. This ‘logorrhea’ of the post-modern times has become a disease like the good old ‘diarrhea’! The disorder cannot be corrected even if you resort to a digital bank transfer system with specific instructions for the payment on the due date. At most of the times the all-encompassing reminders would ke...

Such in-a-soup stories need to be told, because they mostly are about all those faceless people who normally have no voice. It doesn’t matter if the stories were my personal ones or somebody else’s. As you must be aware a writer or a storyteller has the choice of being the narrator in the first person or in the third person, and in post-modern storytelling even in the second person. Well, right? As you also must’ve been aware all the time that several essential services like banking were spared during the pandemic lockdowns, and as far as services at the bank branches are concerned the pandemic hit them real hard with thousands of their staff members getting the infection leading to manpower shortages which was really unfortunate. However, the pandemic had a definitive role in making online transactions a way of life, forcing even the traditionally manual-obsessed customers go for online activities. Therefore, when I discovered a bank failing even in that minimum of online presence I h...

I was disturbed by various ‘business’ calls during work on that day. Since the Indian festive season was in full bloom such calls were not that unnatural. Getting exasperated with a plethora of telemarketing calls from banks, insurance companies and the like I ignored one from an absolutely unknown mobile number. When the same number called again, I answered thinking it could be an important call from someone not at all connected to the lot. I cursed myself as the lady voice spoke up on the other side... ‘Hello Sir, I’m calling from xyz finance company...” “Yes?” I responded. “Sir, our xyz finance company is giving you an overdraft facility...” “Why?” “Sir, half of your monthly salary will be given as overdraft to you...” “Why?” “Sir, the amount will be totally interest free...” “Why?” “So Sir, where do you work and what is your monthly salary?” And then I hung up. The audacious lady tried several times later on. However, I decided to follow the age-old dictum ‘once bitten, twice shy’ ...

Only the other day we were discussing with a few bankers about the fact that online frauds or crimes are still very low in India compared to advanced countries. We justified this with another fact that millions of Indians are still ignorant or have no online presence. And just the next day I had a close shave from a potentially serious credit card fraud. We have heard a lot about card protection in terms of safeguarding against phishing or seemingly genuine emails asking for personal information, dubious text messages, stolen or lost cards, taking care while shopping or at the ATM machine, skimming and so on. But to find out what exactly defines my experience I had to surf the net for a while finally resting on a term ‘Tele Phishing’.  During a very busy day in office I received a call from a lady who identified herself as a bank executive of the private bank with which I had multiple and most frequently used credit card accounts. As I had been used to getting such calls from very...

Emboldened by his earlier encouraging experience with the banking hawks Mr. Thames Pond decides to carry on from there. He takes a pledge to encounter any call from any credit card or banking executive with guts and intelligence. He must ensure that he refuse all unnecessary offers or entrapments. He’d no longer be vulnerable. And then, as usual, he gets a call right away…     “Hello…am I speaking to Thames Pond please?” “Who’s this please?” “This is Moneycanny Sir, from UC bank!...Mr. Pond?” “Right, this is Pond. Thames Pond!” “So nice to talk to you again! Good morning Sir!” “Good morning..Ms. err…!” “Mr. Pond…can I take just two minutes of your most precious time?” “Regarding what?” “Sir, you are one of our most privileged customers. We’ve reviewed your payment record over the years and found your credit history absolutely sound. Therefore, we’d like to offer you a rare privilege in terms of travel benefits. We are sending you a package of travel vouchers allowing you to ...