On 13/08/06, English Books - Al Hasa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Also As another person mentioned, best is to open the accounts in Village > banks, where you get the best service, and you are on friendly terms with > the Bank Manager, who can guide you in the banking procedures. If not have > someone who is either a good friend, or relative, in the bank who can do the > work for you whilst you go to the caffetaria to have a cup to tea with nice > ussal baji or sip some beer. Jerry Fernandes
To play devil's advocate here and mention some unstated points: * We expect great service while paying peanuts for the same! I understood how inexpensive Indian banking was when I opened an account at the bank (forget which one, maybe Dresdener) on the Ku'damm in Berlin during a scholarship stint there way back in 1990. When I asked the lady at the counter as to what interest rate saving bank accounts earned in Germany, she had a very puzzled look on her face! * Earlier on, in my earlier days at work, I actually worked in a nationalised bank in a junior capacity. (That was till one realised that words had more 'life' in them than figures ... specially if they're figures about someone else's money!) Bank of India, at Nerul, some of you might agree with me, has long had the reputation of being a rather friendly place. Not only can you get prompt service, but you would also get a smile and a personal query from the staff about the state of your health or when your relatives last wrote to you, and other such trivia! The amazing thing was that those at the helm of affairs there (people like MS 'Manik' Kamat, the late Mr Khanolkar, Mr Prabhu and others) actually managed to attain this while treating their staff very well. Mr Kamat would come up, with almost an apologetic look on his face, saying, "Noronha, I'm not saying you need to do this today. But if you have a little bit of time to spare, and can manage...." It was a very tough decision to quit this branch, though I clearly preferred words over numbers. This was true of the Nerul branch, which was rural. But the same bank's Saligao branch, for instance, is a place where I've had bad experiences. Recently, a sterling cheque was lost by the bank. They gave me a few tense movements by saying they were unable to trace it. They managed to do a 'stop payment' on the cheque. The bad news was that it was a long-overdue cheque received from one of the (few) parties that had been long delaying to pay my dues. The even worse news was that I get billed something like Rs 1500 for a clear fault of the bank and a deficiency in *their* service! Had I been a lawyer, I would have know that this would amount to a clear violation of consumer rights, and could make an interesting case in the Consumer Redressal Forum. Fact is, though, that banks like these know the average customer is too busy leading life to even bother to fight back. Maybe I just should... FN PS: Sometime back, the Central Bank of India at Panjim lost a salary cheque of a colleague. But a reimbursement was made after the issue was taken up with the ombudsman for banking services. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Frederick Noronha http://fn.goa-india.org 9822122436 +91-832-240-9490 http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Goanet mailing list [email protected] http://lists.goanet.org/listinfo.cgi/goanet-goanet.org
