At last, RBI has realized that the buck stops here!
Your article has analyzed the issue thoroughly and suggested some very good ideas for implementation. Let RBI first implement what it thinks is right for the moment. Anything to be modified or incorporated as suggested in the article could be taken up later within a specified time limit. Hope these proposals do get implemented properly and sooner the better for the harrassed credit card users.
I like the part abt the "No Calling Registry" the best. High time we had something like this in India. Gr8 if this can be extended to call Callcentres / BPO ... Credit cards, loans, telephone operators etc.
While the RBI regulations on credit card usage is welcome, the more important issues have been left out. While the intertest rates have dropped considerably, credit card companies continue to charge a whopping 35% pa. Further, late payment charges even for a day are as high as 30% of the outstanding. It is these issues which the regulator should have addressed rather than number or limit of the credit cards.
Although the RBI guidelines shall give a lot of relief to credit card users, these should also address the biger problem of other credit products i.e. car loans, housing loans, insurance etc. and the promotional calls from the banks & the financial institutions. Very often in the midst of your work, you get a call (on your cell phone)from a bank or a financial institution regarding their promotional dffers, which distracts you. In case one is doing some creative work, then the whole of your creative imagination is washed away by the distraction caused by the phone call. This should somehow be taken care of. RCG
RBI should insist the credit card companies to reduce the interest on credit to 2%. The interest collected as service charges is 3% to 3.1% pm. which is very high. It is almost like a private money lender.
Just wanted to advise that if one has a Mastercard and there are unauthorized charges on it, the credit card company must bear the loss and not the cardholder. It is a ruling of Mastercard that they will bear the loss due to fraud charges. I do not believe credit card holders are aware of this in India.One may go to sites for Visa and Mastercard to get more information about them before using the same.
1. The "pay by" date given by credit card companies is interpreted by the card companies as the date their office records the receipt of the money. Which means one actually has to pay several days in advance of the date in order to avoid late payment charges!!!! In case there are holidays around the "last date for Payment" one has to pay even earlier!!
2. There is no place where the card companies will record that the payment cheque has been submitted by the card member. There are only drop boxes where the cheque can be dropped or it may be sent by ordinary mail to a post box number! So in case the cheque is lost/misplaced or wrongly posted by the company, the customer has no recourse since they have taken no responsibility of the cheque being received. Calling up Helplines and other numbers will usually only result in harrassment since the customer has no record!!
Some regulations must be put in force to ensure that the customer is not harrassed for the companies' errors/carelessness. Since all the companies follow this same method, its either accept their unreasonable terms or go without credit cards.
