Originally Posted by sam7145

On 30th March 2011, there was an unauthorized transaction done in my account of Rs 2197/-. The Narration said this was done by ECS DR TP ICICI PRULIFE – 2065771279.
My A/C for 30 Mar 2011 shows a withdrawal of Rs 2197/- and then a deposit of the same amount on the same day.

Overview of the situation –

I took an ICICI Prudential Health Assure policy long back and made the premium payment mode as monthly ECS. For this I signed a mandate of amount not more than Rs 172/- per month on a certain date. For several months this was fine and every month on a particular date an amount of Rs 169/- was debited from my salary A/C. On March 2010, the ECS for that month was dishonoured by the bank for insufficient funds. As a result my policy got lapsed. The bank also charged me the ECS return charges as applicable. Since then my policy is in lapsed state and I had no intention to renew it or make it active. This was also known by tICICI Prudential. Also since then no ECS was charged to my A/C for the premium since the policy was lapsed.

On 30 Mar 2011, ICICI Prudential suddenly attempted to withdraw Rs 2197/- from my salary A/C. I enquired about this with my branch over phone and was informed that, this transaction could not take place since my A/C had lower balance. So they could not take the amount. I visited the branch and talked to multiple bank people to get a resolution of this issue.

The questions were simple enough –
1.Who has authorized this transaction? Since ECS cannot be like you withdraw any amount on any given day from any A/C.
2.This transaction took place suddenly without any prior intimation, knowledge or authorization, so I am not supposed to keep any funds
3.This transaction should have been denied NOT because of insufficient funds but because of LACK OF AUTHORISATION.

The bank officials at the Salt Lake Sec II branch could not resolve my queries. Their answer was that they do not know about any authorization. They just get the A/C no and amount request from RBI and do the needful. That means that at any point of time my A/C is not secured from fraudulent transactions. Without my explicit authorization, how can the bank give away money to anyone who demands it. They should at least check the validity. Moreover the transaction did not happen NOT because of proper security measures of the bank, but because of a lucky insufficient fund in my A/C. This is intolerable since they have charged me the ECS return charges from my A/C which is definitely not my fault. But I expect my bank to be secured enough to deal with unauthorized transactions.

This is not a single case of HDFC bank trying frauds. The WORST part is that when I wanted to stop the ECS previously much before this happened they said that this cannot be done at all from their end. They gave no guideline. They are showing RBI rules which are not true. RBI rules are different and HDFC bank is lying.

Dear customer,

We absolutely understand your concerns, and would like to investigate your complaint in greater detail. Request you to write to talktous@hdfcbank.com with your account number, contact details and the reference id TTU000301226042011, so we may look into this matter and take necessary action.

Regards, Customer Assistance, HDFC Bank

i was having the same kind of problem hdfc is deducting amts from my account even i was not registered to any ECS but they were deducting amount please refer to the image of the bank summary i hv taken