If you work for an Indian bank, you need to ask your manager’s permission for spending your own money.
OK, maybe I generalize. But it is certainly true for employees of IDBI Bank.
How do I know?
Here is how…
The story begins on the 15th of September, 2025, when I took my 84-year-old mother to IDBI Bank in Meerut to instruct them to not auto-renew a Time Deposit (Fixed Deposit – FD) held by her and instead credit the maturity proceeds to her Savings Bank account, as she had some plans for the money. The instructions were given to the bank on the reverse of the FD certificate, which had a section provided for such maturity instructions.
The same evening, by which time I had returned to Gurgaon, my mother called and told me that there was a credit message from the bank. I asked her to forward the message to me and told her that it would be in response to our visit earlier in the day. I did not give it a second thought as I was tied up and promised myself to check soon. It did strike me as odd that the transaction had been done today for an FD maturing the following day.
Could our banks have become so advanced, doing tomorrow’s transactions today? Could it be an unforeseen impact of the all-conquering AI? You never know where the next big thing will emerge from. I marvelled at the great big technological leap banks had taken while I was not looking.
When I did get around to checking the transaction a few days later, I realized that instead of the FD amount being credited along with the interest earned, the amount credited was lower than the principal amount placed by my mother in the FD.
Had the Indian economy, long known for its inflationary tendencies, suddenly turned to negative inflation, a la Japan or the Eurozone a few years back, with banks charging for keeping customer money instead of paying interest on it? As a one-time banker, I was ashamed I had not kept track of developments in banking.
With a one-time banker’s belief in the banking system of always doing the right thing as part of their DNA, I kept looking for reasons that would explain this apparent discrepancy. Not able to find a logical explanation, I did the next unnatural thing, of trying to contact the bank through the numbers on their website and ones I had in my contact list. Don’t laugh! Obviously, nothing got answered.
Not having the flexibility to visit the bank branch again, as I do not live in Meerut, I filed a complaint in the “Raise Fraud/ Dispute” section of their website. Yes, this loophole had been left open on their website. This was around the 20th of September.
And another one, for the dispute did not end up dying in a blind alley of corporate apathy. It resulted in a phone call from the lady to whom the instruction had been handed over on 15th September. Not only that, she could be reached through WhatsApp messaging on the same number.
Talk about weak systems. A dispute raising system that does not send the dispute towards a horrible, lonely end, followed by someone bothering to respond to it. Indian banks have a lot to answer for. Or at least IDBI Bank.
The mystery was solved when the lady called. She told me that instead of being paid on the date of maturity, the FD had been uplifted the day we went to the bank, a day before maturity. What that did was trigger the premature uplift process of the bank, which penalizes the customer for not completing the tenure. And clearly, the bank did not have the systems to prevent a premature uplift one day before the real maturity, despite no such thing being requested by the customer, nor anyone bothering to verify the reason for an 84-year-old woman to lose a significant amount as interest and not wait one day more.
Anyway, after an initial attempt at telling me that it was all our fault since we went to the bank in time to provide updated, legitimate maturity instructions, which were crystal clear, when I did not seem to agree, she admitted that it was an error on the bank’s part and that my mother would be compensated soon.
This was the beginning of a series of pleasant interactions over phone calls and WhatsApp messages, where every few days I would inquire about the non-resolution of the issue, and she would provide a new reason for why it had not been resolved. I think I might have made a recurring weekly calendar entry to check with her why it had not been done so far.
In one of the pleasant conversations, she requested me to withdraw the complaint as she would have to pay for it from her own money as she was the one responsible for the error. I politely told her that I was dealing with IDBI Bank and not her and that I was neither privy to nor responsible for the arrangement between the bank and its employees.
In another pleasant conversation, she introduced a colleague who repeated the request of withdrawing the complaint as they would have to bear the cost from their own money. I politely told them that I’d rather they bear the cost than my 84-year-old mother for no fault of hers.
On 21st October, she messaged, after a call during which I asked her to confirm through a message, “Sir
As conveyed the resolution will be done by 31-10-2025
Regards”
On 31st October she called to tell me that it could not be done by the 31st because the approving manager had not been available and would not be available for another week.
Get it now?
She had to get the manager to approve the payment that she was supposed to make from her own money.
Wink wink! Nudge nudge!
Anyway, I told her that I would do what I needed to. Since a lot of time had passed without any concrete action on their part. On 10th November I filed a complaint (ID N202526016020880) with the integrated banking ombudsman set up by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
On 18th November I received a call from her saying the resolution would be done the following day. Her manager, who had been too busy these past two months to speak to me while she was presumably collecting money in her account to pay my mother, came on the line as well to confirm the same.
On 19th November the shortfall was credited to my mother’s account.
Isn’t it great that systems exist to protect the interests of the common man?
Isn’t it awful that these systems need to be resorted to for receiving fair treatment?
Isn’t it even more awful that we have a regulator intent on ensuring that regulated entities do the right thing?
darkofficehumour 