This blog has been a small cog in the wheel of resolving customer grievances and I am sharing one such story. The trailing email thread tells it all and the summary is that Paritosh was fined Rs 11800 as fine for no fault of his and the Banking Ombudsman helped him reverse the charges. Related post: How to resolve your banking problems and grievances

I am sharing the email thread because if there’s a problem, there’s a solution too. This share is about helping yourself find a solution to your banking problems and fighting to the finish. Paritosh shows the way!

Here’s the email thread

Paritosh’s mail yesterday
Hi Sir ,

The matter got resolved , after approaching the banking odusman it got resolved . The bank agreed to their mistake after an internal investigation and reversed my charges .

Thanks for your help .

Regards,
Paritosh

Paritosh’s earlier mail
Hi Ranjan ,

Thanks for the reply . No i do not have any acknowledgement as i was not given one . i just gave application to the executive alongwith the cheque book .

Regards,
Paritosh

My response to Paritosh

Do you have a copy of your application to close the account at SCB. Does the copy have an acknowledgement from them?

In any case try to lodge a complaint to the Banking Ombudsman. Link: http://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/bs_viewcontent.aspx?Id=164#

Online complaint form: https://secweb.rbi.org.in/BO/compltindex.htm

Let me know the response.

Ranjan Varma

Paritosh’s first email
On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 2:34 PM, paritosh chandragupta wrote:
Hi Sir ,
I came across your mail-id from an article on banking grievances on rupee manager website . i have been cheated by standard charted bank and robbed of my hard earned 11800 rupees . The case details are as follows :-

I had invested in DSP BR mutual fund thru SCB as my brocker 3 years ago . the SIP was deducted from SCB bank account . the account had 10000/- as minimum balance and therefore I gave an application in the bank to close the account 2 years ago in Bangalore branch . I transferred the SIP to HDFC account.

For all I knew SCB account was closed and everything was settled .

I gave a reddemption request on this fund on 2nd Augest alongwith a request to credit the amount in HDFC bank account . The AMC rejected my request of account change as copy of cheque was not enclosed . On top of that they procesed the reddemption request in which it was explicitly mentioned that the credit was to be done to HDFC account . The funds were transferred to SCB ACCOUNT .

I waited for a couple of days thinking since the SCB account was closed , this would be rejected , but it was accepted and i discovered that the account ws never closed . They deducted 11800 /- Rs as the charges for not maintaining the minmum balance . I do not know what to do now . I approached their branch and they asked me to submit a proof that the account was closed . No acknowledgement was given to me while closing the account . After this there was no communication from banks side although they had my mail id . they contend that account statement were sent to my old address and it was my responsibility to change the address . I told that as far as i was concerned the account was closed and why should i change address in a closed account ? I gave the instruction application to their executive alongwith my cheque book and got my debit card blocked . I need your expert opinion as what can be done in this case .

I am willing to fight this to finish as the bank staff was very rude and even questioned my persnol integrity .

Expecting your help . Pklease let me know if you need any more details.

Paritosh Chandra

Related post: How to resolve your banking problems and grievances

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I have a weekly column on BiharDays, a leading online journal focused on Bihar, that’s called MoneyTree. And I talk about the best ever investment that you can make.

Here’s the link

btw, I am sharing the best investment ideas in that post. I do not say that it is easy!

Also BiharDays has an interesting bio for me. This is what it reads:

Ranjan Varma, Founder, RupeeManager believes that learning is a continuous process and does not agree with the adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Approaching the age of 44, he left his job in a PSU and now is a blogger and editor of a Personal Finance website , is building financial management software and conducts RupeeCamps. His writings are also available on :http://ranjanvarma.com
He thinks it’s possible to start a new business after 40, run a marathon at 50 and re-wire your brain after 60. It’s not easy and that’s why it’s worth doing.

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Mint report about investors in Steve’s business. Excerpts:

Each of these innovations has resulted in enormous gains for investors. Shares of Apple have gained at a compounded annual growth rate of 17.25% since the company’s initial public offering about 31 years ago. This is about the rate at which the Nasdaq Composite index has risen during the same period, and considerably higher than the 7.3% annual return of the S&P 500 index.

But Apple’s major gains have accrued since Jobs’ return to the helm in July 1997, about 12 years after he was fired by the company he had founded. Since then, the company’s shares have gained at an annual average rate of 39%, at a time when the S&P 500 has grown at an annual rate of just 1.5%. Also note that during this period of a little over 14 years, the MSCI Emerging Markers Index has risen at a rate of only around 3%.

So the best investments are those where value is created and innovation is their mantra. Popular examples in India would be Azim Premji’s Wipro and Murthy’s Infosys.

The problem is you need to find them when they are not yet successful. How do you find such businesses/companies when they are born! One way is to follow the guys who are keen observers and players of the Indian Startup scene. My suggestions would be Vijay Anand, Sameer Guglani, Nikhil Pahwa and Snigdha Sengupta.

Do you know others that I should know? Thanks

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The reason I am writing this post is not to criticize, but make a point on how financial management impacts the lives of people.

Government financial management:
They spend more than they earn. So they have a fiscal deficit, which though a jargon, is simply the difference between their earnings and their expenses.

They earn through taxes which they decide on their own. And yes, they can print money too!

To finance the fiscal deficit, they require the Banks, Insurers and financial institutions to invest in government securities (commonly known as G-Sec). There are stringent regulations that envisages the FIs to invest in G-Sec like the SLR requirement, Insurance Investment regulations.

They spend in whatever way they want. The agenda is set with an eye on the vote bank. And with little regard to governance.

There’s no point in discussing their savings as they have a negative balance, called the fiscal deficit.

Their investments? We can label their expenses in building infrastructure, agriculture, technology and education as their investments. They could have done much better, will you agree?

If you look at the personal portfolios of our leaders in the government (in-fact all politicians), the investment has little to lead by example for the Indian youth. Mostly they have invested in real estate and FDs.

Sidenote:Maybe they will come up with regulations for bloggers and other media guys to ensure that the media/publications do not mislead the public. I will eagerly wait for their definition of “misleading” ! I mean how would these leaders (The Government) define mis”leading”.

Footnote:
SPENDING: Total expenditure in 2011-12 seen at 12.58 trillion rupees
REVENUE: Gross tax receipts seen at 9.32 trillion rupees in 2011-12
* A fiscal deficit is regarded by some as a positive economic event. For example, economist John Maynard Keynes believed that deficits help countries climb out of economic recession. On the other hand, fiscal conservatives feel that governments should avoid deficits in favor of a balanced budget policy.

Coming back to the point I wanted to make about financial management impacting the quality of lives of people. The government is beyond my personal circle of influence, though collectively we must make it more accountable. However if I focus on my own financial management, I can positively impact the lives of my family members atleast. (Otherwise your family members are free to blog about how you ruined the family finances, just like this post)

What are your thoughts on the way the government manages it’s finances? And how you should do your own personal finance management?

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I wrote this column for BiharDays and am sharing with you too.

Yesterday was Teachers’ Day and I join you in wishing our Teachers who have helped us learn, unlearn and generally influenced our decisions of life. However, I do not remember all my Teachers but fondly remember only a few. What about you?

Barring the few Teachers those who have impacted our life individually, I do not think that the education system has benefitted us much. Let me share a very insightful post by Seth Godin, an International Marketer, who says that,

“Large-scale education was never about teaching kids or creating scholars. It was invented to churn out adults who worked well within the system.”

Here’s the link to his entire post. It’s a must read.

His hypothesis is: A hundred and fifty years ago, adults were incensed about child labor. Low-wage kids were taking jobs away from hard-working adults. Sure, there was some moral outrage at seven-year olds losing fingers and being abused at work, but the economic rationale was paramount. Factory owners insisted that losing child workers would be catastrophic to their industries and fought hard to keep the kids at work–they said they couldn’t afford to hire adults. It wasn’t until 1918 that nationwide compulsory education was in place.

Part of the rationale to sell this major transformation to industrialists was that educated kids would actually become more compliant and productive workers. Our current system of teaching kids to sit in straight rows and obey instructions isn’t a coincidence–it was an investment in our economic future. The plan: trade short-term child labor wages for longer-term productivity by giving kids a head start in doing what they’re told.

Godin asks the question, “Are we going to applaud, push or even permit our schools (including most of the private ones) to continue the safe but ultimately doomed strategy of churning out predictable, testable and mediocre factory-workers?

Moving on to Money education, we are woefully short of any expertise. I have already talked about how money management is not an academic skill but a Life Skill. It’s important and should be covered in schools and colleges.

But I also realize that the teachers in schools and colleges are themselves not equipped to provide money education. I mean, you can’t teach something which you don’t know yourself, right?

To get you interested in learning money management and show you how it’s so simple, let me explain thus:
Money management is just like driving a car, your money car.
When we drive our cars, we essentially focus on 4 things…
1. Be able to handle the steering.
2. Be alert on the brakes.
3. Be able to change gears/clutch.
4. Step on the accelerator.
So, with our money cars…
1. Maximize Income
2. Optimize Expenses.
3. Optimize savings
4. Maximize investments.

Often, the only thing people are interested in learning is stepping on the gas, i.e. investments. May I remind people that investment is just one component of personal finance and there are other things that should catch your attention too.

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