It all began with a harmless game of banging your vehicle against another. What should have been an afternoon of fun and frolic has now turned out to be my worst nightmare to date. Instead of spending a few pounds on entertaining myself, I could now end up having entertained some lucky chap's charge-free, two-day shopping spree. Hear me out, O denizens of blogosphere.
Just beside London's famous Millennium Eye there's a game parlour where kids of all ages get into a toy 'car' for a charge of two pounds. The frenzy starts when participants, occupying their own vehicles, start moving. Their aim: hit your neighbours as hard and as often as you can. All in good spirit of course. Twenty minutes and ten pounds sterling later, my friend Ram and I came out, thrilled to bits and just a bit tired. But since I hadn't been on the moving Eye as yet, I purchased a ticket (nearly twelve pounds) and went about waiting for my turn for the 'launch' while Ram decided to stay on terra firma finding some other means to keep himself busy. As I took in the sights of the City from a height of about 500ft, I touched my pocket as a matter of habit to check if the wallet containing my passport and other stuff was there. To my horror, I realized it wasn't! The only thing that occupied my mind for the rest of the journey was 'What would happen if I didn't get it back? Would I have to contact the Indian High Commissioner? Where is the Indian Embassy in London?' I decided to query Ram the moment I touched down.
Being ever the hopeful man, he suggested that we first check up the game parlour first to see if the wallet was reported as lost property. When we spoke to the security guy, he asked me the details of the wallet. I described it as much as I could, listed its contents from memory and waited with bated breath. I could have leapt for joy when he returned a minute later clutching my wallet in one hand and a form in the other. I quickly scanned my wallet, and to my immense relief, found my passport and an all-zone travelcard intact. Little did I know the price I would have to pay for not having checked its contents thoroughly.
The wallet safely lodged in my rucksack, we made our way to the nearest McDonald's and ordered a couple of veggie burgers for a late lunch. The rest of the day went off pleasantly, strolling around St.Peter's Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge among other places. Later that night, we watched a movie or two and hit the sack after a meal of rice and those wonderful South Indian specialties, rasam and sambar.
The following day was a Sunday and we passed it off in discussion and movie-watching. When the time came for me to leave, I casually rummaged through my wallet and for the second time in two days, nearly had a heart attack: my credit card was missing! This time around, I could act quick. Though I didn't have the phone number of the bank at hand, I asked Ram to search the Net and find out where I could report the loss. After an anxious half an hour, he managed to get the number. I had to call India to reach the customer service and after being put on hold for a few expensive minutes (I was calling from a BT payphone using an international card!), I was told that my card had been blocked. Breathing a sigh of relief, I asked the Customer-care executive to tell me the latest charges against my card, just to be sure things were all right. Imagine my shock when she said that the current outstanding was a mammoth Rs.68,000! I should have fainted but I came to realize later on I was made of sterner stuff. I immediately explained to the lady on the line that the said charges were not incurred by me and that they were fraudulent. She was apologetic and said that I was liable since I had not reported the card earlier. After a few more minutes of futile angry talk, I gave up trying to get her to do something because she kept repeating the same line over and over again.
A couple of months later, I chose to return home, cutting short my stay abroad citing personal reasons. And no prizes for guessing what awaited me at my office: a bomb in the form of my credit card statement. I suppose the shock should not have been huge but still, seeing the amount in black and white (or in whatever colour they print their statements) has a certain effect on the nervous system, if you know what I mean. I bit my lip and continued with my work since I was sure the bank would do something about it because I'd done my bit with lodging a complaint. I wouldn't have believed it if someone had foreseen the course of events that would follow shortly. Well, okay, I would have, but with a lot of difficulty.
At first, I didn't hear from the bank. But being bankers, they had their duty to go about and so I received a call on my mobile (In fact, I came to know later, after talking to my parents, that the bank had actually called them a few times before I had returned to India) asking me when I would pay up. I told them I had no intentions of paying any money since the transactions were fraudulent. I remember getting a call once or twice after that and one of them was an open threat; perhaps they thought subtlety would not work with me (thank you Stan Chart).
Whatever their reason, I now felt that I had to get some legal counsel: my nerves were badly shaken by the last threatening call. Luckily one of my friends' father is a senior advocate and I asked him for advice. He said I had nothing to worry about; since I had not incurred the charges, I didn't have to pay a single penny (paisa, if you will). I felt reassured now that I had a leading lawyer as my legal advisor.
The bank maintained general silence - if you don't count the occasional call asking for money - and I presumed, wrongly, that the matter had come to a dead end. The bank, however, had other ideas. I started getting calls from one particular cell phone from a guy who could speak only language - Hindi. I spoke to him for a while and realised that he was nothing but a collection agent and had no particular inclination to help me in any way. He started speaking quite rudely after a while and, what was worse, it was cutting into my work hours. As if things were not bad enough, his "superior", with whom I was asked to talk on this agent's mobile, refused to let me reply to his statements and insisted that I had to listen to his monolgue! I was so disgusted I simply handed the phone back to this guy and walked off.
I was also shocked that a so-called manager of StanChart would stoop to the level of calling me a cheat when, IMO, I had done nothing that would have given them reason to label me thus. Since then, this agent - whose name I didn't even know - started harassing me by calling me almost non-stop. At one point, I got almost two dozen calls in a single day! Incredible as it sounds, it is true.
A couple of days later, I got another call from the bank - this time from a person who sounded more reasonable and more likely to converse in a civil manner. However, he too insisted that I had to pay a sum of Rs.4,000 in order for the bank to take up the case further with their fraud control department. Further, he said, I had made a mistake of not disputing the charges in writing. I was stunned because none of the people I had spoken to so far, had even mentioned such a thing. Very reluctantly, I agreed to pay the sum of four thousand, but not before I went on record saying that my paying this sum was not, by any means, an indication of having accepted the liability.
And that is where it stands now. If a day passes when this problem doesn't eat away my peace of mind, I am a happy man.
