Dear Sir/Madam,

My name is Prashant Katarkar & i am customer of Bank of Maharashtra, Aarey road, Goregaon (west) branch. Few days back i checked my bank balance & it showed INR 173 whereas I had left the balance of INR 614 in the bank. I do not transact in that bank much & had opened the account for a housing scheme under the directives of Nagari Niwara (NGO) who had promised house under Urban Land Ceiling (ULC) Act. Since the ULC act was abolished, i withdrew the money & thought to maintain it if i need the bank services in future. The minimum balance required to maintain then was INR 500. The same was revised in January 2011 to the minimum balance of INR 1000 & i was not intimated the same. When I went to renew debit card given by the bank in July 2011, I asked the card renewing employee about the minimum balance required to maintain. He answered me INR 600. Since i had sufficent balance, i decided to continue the account. When i checked the account few days back in an ATM, I found only INR 173. I approched bank and asked them to close down the savings a/c no - 20039323246 as they had deducted non-maintainance charges without informing me.
The staff deactivated my debit card but refused to close the account. He suggested me to pay INR 500 & then he would close the account. I complained regarding the same saying i was informed only minimum balance of INR 600 & i was not notified about the increase in maintainance balance. They said its none of their concern what i was informed & i should keep reading circulars on notice board. I approached the branch manager & even He was defensive towards his staff who fed me wrong information & suggested i should keep reading the circulars. As per him, The branch will never intimate the customers individually. The branch manager refused to close the account until i pay the charges. Now the balance is INR -273 but i dont know why was i suggested to pay INR 500.
I have following complaints :
1. Why was i fed wrong information in month of July 2011 when the account maintainance charges were revised in January 2011? Isn't it violation of RTI?
2. The circulars of the bank are in such small font on a small notice board which was not even there in July so how come the manager expects that i should be reading it?
3. If it was difficult for bank to contact me on individual level to inform increase in maintainance balance then they could have informed me in July when i was there for debit card renewal. My balance was less than INR 1000 so the employee could have notified me regarding the same. On the contrary he gave me wrong information upon raising a query on maintainance balance.
4. When a customer account is not maintained by the customer, doesn't RBI guidelines empower the bank to inform the same to customer & close the bank account under bank's own discretion? So why Bank of Maharashtra preferred to let the balance go in debit account & not inform me or close my account?

What i see here is the bank does not want to own responsibility for wrong information from their employee. I could have taken an action right then wether to close the account or to continue it by replenishing the balance amount, only if i was informed the case. The branch manager find it a very trivial issue & emphasised me to pay the money. It shows that the staff themselves were not updated about the maintainance balance revision & even the circular could not reach the vision of the bank staff itself. The manager also doesn't wish to apologise for inconvenience when actually observing He is the one who should check how well the staff is trained & how well they are updated with bank information.



Regards,
Prashant Katarkar
Mobile - 9757121555