I am working with Bally Technology, Bangalore. Initially we had a salary account with HSBC. That time we offered a Credit card from HSBC with NO CHARGES whatsoever due to "special tie up" between Bally and HSBC Bank, India. I got a Credit card for self, also, an add on card was provided "free of charge".

I opted for the card as it was free and carried no liability. The subject of membership fees was not mentioned by the agent.

No calls came to me from HSBC and no SMS.As I do not use credit card, the card remained unused.

Since, I don't use the card, i never bothered to look into the e-statements that came to my email address.

Suddenly in 2009, 16 months after the card was issued, I get a SMS that i am liable to pay around 2000 Rs. When i ring up the call center they say the charges are Membership charges along with the late fees for card.

The agent advised me to call the collection center. When called the collection center, they told me to call back the Call center. I repeated the whole story again to the agent, I was put on hold for 15 minutes with no response. They threw their hands in air and said they cant do anything.

The company never bothered me to inform that I was being charged. Also, what happened to the special tie up and special customer thing.

Let me narrate how HSBC Bank people have tried to cheat me and probably other customers as well.

The bill HSBC sent me in the month of Oct 09 for the period 15/sep/09 to 14/oct/09. The due date was 5/nov/09; they have raised the amount of Rs. 1250 & Rs 2810 (this was the purchase on 14/Aug/09 and 29/jul/09) and calculated the finance charges with dues and interest. These two amounts should have been raised in the Aug 09 bill but since HSBC wanted to create a trap to earn free money from me and cheat me or perhaps rob me in an apparently decent way, they did not demand the amount in that month, but purposefully delayed the demand for two months just to add the interest amount. I had again called up their customer care and told them to correct the forged and falsely fabricated bill and resend the corrected bill to me so that I can make payments on the correct bill to which they agreed. Also, I made it very clear that I am not going to fall prey to their fooling practices. After a few days somebody from HSBC customer care called me up and told me to pay at least the Oct-09 bill until the new corrected copy of bill is sent. So, as per that, I made the payment of amount Rs. 6281 excluding the wrongly put amount of Rs.1250 and Rs. 2810 and its related finance charges on 10/nov/09, and hoped that they would send me the corrected bill in the next month so that I could make payment. BUT I WAS WRONG AND HAD MISBELIEVED THAT HSBC PEOPLE WERE GENTLEMEN. In the next bill, I was surprised to see that my bill was not corrected, but whole loads of new charges and fines were added to it. I wanted to bring this incident to notice to all of you of how these people invent ingenious ways of earning money