4 thoughts on “Is HDFC Bank letting Justdial steal your money?”

  1. INDIAN PEOPLES FORCE

    All the complaints regarding the fraud of JustDial can be registered at indianpeoplesforce.org. Your complaint would be taken up in front of relevant authorities.

  2. FWIW, given that Bachchan is (1) an investor/sharedholder in JustDial, (2) a brand ambassador for JustDial, this is hardly surprising.

  3. The banks are paid for regular debits by ecs/dd etc; hence see that as income and not their prime promise of safeguarding customer interests as per their claim to subscribe to ‘The Banking code’ (download from bank website of from banking code org site as common to all banks).

    Read ‘The Banking code’ and advise/ quote it to Hdfc a known cheat bank on its promises. Customer must write to bank grievance, then Nodal and then approach Consumer forum (not advisable to approach Ombudsman as usually setup and paid by banks).
    Also advertise widely and send with links to bank Nodal to act fast, usually they do.

    Police may or may not take it up but he could try if he has any helpful contacts. Alternatively after going thru CF process he can file private criminal case. Police will take it up if presented as pure fraud and cheating which is Non cognizable, else don’t have to.

  4. These kind of frauds are so common these days. Justdial is a small online company but even big companies do it openly. Basically, if they find a loophole to scam people they’ll use it without any guilt or shame. I’ve faced two such scams, but luckily I got my money back in both.
    First was a pretty common scam done by almost all telecom companies. I faced it with BSNL and my father faced it with TATA Indicom so I’m sure about these two. The scam goes like this: they monitor phone usage and if they feel that it belongs to a rural or illiterate person, they start activating value added services without the user’s permission. Legally they can’t do this but if they feel that the user won’t understand what’s happening, they take the chance. I’ve also heard of our maid who said every time she recharged, the money was debited for caller tunes and she didn’t know how to deactivate it.
    The same thing happened to me and BSNL started activating these services for my phone. I called customer care and deactivated the services but he refused to return the money and didn’t know how it got activated. Then I searched BSNL’s website, horribly designed that it is, and found their rules and guidelines. They have a user grievance redressal process but it was too long. Instead I found the email of some high placed officer in my state and emailed him a long mail telling him how BSNL was committing fraud and how they should be ashamed of themselves. I didn’t even threaten legal action. I just said that I was going to change my sim and just wanted him to be ashamed of himself. I got a quick reply that basically said sorry but didn’t accept it as a fraud. They said it was a mistake and in the coming days they recharged my phone several times and returned more than I had lost.

    The second fraud was when 20 thousand rupees were deducted from my ICICI account in 4 transactions. ICICI did warn me through a phone call and asked if I wanted to block the card there and then and I did that. They suggested I file an FIR. I asked them if they would return the money and the customer care person wouldn’t answer directly but I understood that they didn’t have any legal responsibility to return the money. I searched online and found that the bank can’t return the money. Filing and FIR and complaining to the cyber crime cell also doesn’t lead to returning of the money. But if you find out the websites where the money was deducted, you could tell them that it was fraud and you’d have to submit the FIR and bank’s letter to confirm that it was a fraud and then the websites return the money if it hasn’t cleared yet so you have to do it quickly.
    I found some code for the website names in my online transactions list. I googled it and found that all four transactions were done on two dating sites. One was seniordating.com and the other I don’t remember now but it was some dating site only. I emailed both of them. Both had two transactions each. I told them that I could provide FIR and other confirmation. They didn’t respond but returned my money directly. In the end I lost around 1k because the money was converted twice from rupees to dollar and back. But I got 19k back. I was happy but didn’t understand what had happened.
    Doing some more research I feel that this is a scam done by these dating sites. They acquire credentials from hackers and do online transactions till the card is blocked. Most people don’t know what to do when this happens. Most people keep fighting with the bank and the bank uses delay tactics. Till then it’s too late because the money has already transferred to the site’s account. Those who do contact the website, they return the money instead of getting into a legal hassle. So if they attack 10 accounts, and 1 complains they return his money and keep the money from the rest 9 accounts.
    It’s a shame that such scams exist all over. I feel the SMS charges deducted by the banks is also a scam. I don’t need to know every month what my bank account is. But I don’t stop the service as it does come in handy during other scams. Basically, people have no morals anymore. Whatever you can get away with, is okay. From the smallest website to the office of the president of the US, everyone’s corrupted and only cares about money. It’s so depressing.

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