Despite raising the issue of unwanted marketing calls to the HSBC’s highest authorities in India, Sinha continued to be harassed by telecallers on behalf of the lender. Finally, after over four years, a consumer forum found the Bank and its agents guilty and asked them to pay Rs50,000

During 2007-2008, Delhi-based Ashutosh Sinha suffered from innumerable telemarketing calls by direct selling agents (DSAs) of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC). Incidentally, it was the same lender, who rejected Sinha’s application for a credit card and then wanted to sell him ‘other products’.
 

After repeatedly writing to all concerned officials from HSBC, Sinha even raised the issue before the Bank’s India chief, Naina Lal Kidwai (current president of FICCI). Unfortunately, despite her promises, Sinha continued to receive the unsolicited commercial communication or marketing calls from HSBC. Finally, in 2008, he approached a consumer forum, which last month upheld his appeal and fined HSBC and its three DSAs.
 

In its order, the Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, said, “We are of the opinion that some unsolicited calls have been given to the Complainant by which the right of privacy of the Complainant was violated and the Complainant suffered inconvenience, harassment and mental agony due to unsolicited calls. We are of the opinion that Complainant is entitled to be reasonably compensated for that.”
 

The Forum asked HSBC and its three DSA to pay Rs50,000 as compensation for causing harassment to Sinha and also pay Rs5,000 towards litigation cost. However, he feels the penalty is paltry considering the inconvenience, harassment and mental agony he had to suffer. “Since the amount of Rs50,000 is too little, I may move higher court to make sure I drive the message home. I want this to be a lesson for all banks and financial institutions and hope others can learn from my experience too,” Sinha says.
 

Here is the first person account of Sinha’ ordeal to stop telemarketing calls from HSBC…

I moved to Delhi in March 2007 to join a new place of work after a three-year stint in Mumbai. A little later, sometime in May 2007, I applied for a credit card from HSBC. A person visited the office on behalf of HSBC, made me fill the form. He gave me a receipt for the application. About a month later, I was told that the application had been rejected. In addition, as happens with financial institutions, the communication was sugarcoated and no reason was given for the rejection.
 

No sooner had the application been rejected, I started getting calls for buying other products of HSBC such as personal loans, home loans and a whole lot of others. I ignored the first few calls because the rejection of the credit card application was fresh in my mind. And, besides, why should I give business to a bank that does not consider me worthy of a credit card customer?
 

However, the calls continued and refused to stop, so I decided to bring it to the notice of HSBC. I wrote to them repeatedly, and each time mentioned the number, date and time of the call. HSBC did reply to some of those emails and said that they were taking necessary action to have the calls stopped. But the calls did not stop. Between July and December 2007, I must have received at least 70 to 100 calls, some of which I did not respond. At times, I was so familiar with the numbers that I would not bother taking the call. On the occasions that I wrote to them, I made sure I wrote down the call details. Over several months, this became a trail of evidence that HSBC found it difficult to dismiss.
 

On 1 October 2007 the concept of Do Not Call was introduced by TRAI and it went live and I formally registered my phone to be a part of the do not call list. However, my phone was already on the do not disturb list by Vodafone.
 

On 23 December 2007, a little after 9am on Sunday, a person called me on behalf of HSBC, offering to sell credit cards. I asked the person to come home. Meanwhile, I called Malini Thadani (Head of Communications, Public Policy and Corporate Sustainability at HSBC at that time) and told her that if the person came home, I may beat him up. She was aghast and blurted, "How can you do that?" I told her the story of what had been happening for over six months. The person did not turn up.
 

Soon after, I got a text message from HSBC regional manager, Jamsher Dhillon. He came home the next day, with a bouquet of flowers, and assured me that I would not get calls from HSBC. I showed him the list of calls I had received, and within minutes, he found out about the culprits. He left my home at around 11:30am and before 3pm there was another call with a sales pitch! I called up Jamsher and he was surprised. He told me that he would send out an internal memo that no one should call my number. Much to my amazement, there were two more calls the next day. I contacted Jamsher again and he said that he was going to stop all telecalling. But he was surely lying because I got yet another call!
 

In the meantime, the quality control people from HSBC in Chennai apologized for what had been happening. They sent me an email and a hard copy of the letter, naming their channel partners who had been calling me regularly. Despite the apology, the calls did not stop!

I wrote to the HSBC headquarters and they asked me to contact the India office. Then, I wrote to Naina Lal Kidwai, who claimed that HSBC takes such matters very seriously! She referred the matter to the head of credit cards, Jagdish Khanna, who claimed that they were working on a system which would not allow any calls to be made if a phone number was on the do not call list. But till this was done, he said that he could not guarantee that the calls would stop.
 

The frequency of the calls, in the meanwhile, had come down but it did not cease completely.

Sometime in January 2013, when I had turned the heat on HSBC, the owner of Mascom India, one of the DSAs, contacted and met me at my office and claimed that he was a cousin of one of my colleagues and requested that I should not pursue the matter. A couple of weeks later, he came along with another person claiming to work for HSBC. The person wept inconsolably and said that because of my complaints, he was going to lose his job at HSBC. I decided to ignore his claims.
 

By now, I had decided that, whether it was HSBC or any other bank, it did not matter to them what end customers had to face. Therefore, I decided to pursue my case in the consumer court.
 

Nearly four and a half years after I had filed the case, on 22 April 2013, the consumer court found HSBC and its three DSAs guilty of violating my privacy and calling repeatedly. The guilty have been asked to pay Rs50,000 and Rs5,000 as litigation cost.
 

I still believe that I have got a raw deal since I have had to suffer at their hands for one full year. It must be pointed out that after the case was filed in the consumer court, I have never ever got any telemarketing calls from HSBC, but I still do get calls from HDFC Bank and Citibank.
 

You can read other stories of HSBC over here: http://moneylife.in/?cx=012932029967637413115%3Aroup7yt0ras&cof=FORID%3A9&ie=UTF-8&q=HSBC&imageField.x=15&imageField.y=11