Credit cards - convenience or harassment

Credit cards were started to make financial transactions convenient. One can not carry hard cash all the time. It is risky also. But over the period, credit cards have become a source of harassment.

Me and my son are member of RCI, the time sharing company. It got into an arrangement with Standard Chartered Bank and offered us a credit card. The bank issued us two credit cards, one for me and one for my son. My son travels a lot and he used the card very frequently. Slowly we discovered that it would be advisable for us to check the bills sent by the bank very thoroughly, as there might be wrong entries causing us financial loss.

We discovered that bank was charging interest from us for late payment, whereas we had made payments well before the payment date. Now, every time the bill comes, we will have to make two to three calls to the bank to tell them that we had made payment well before the date and how can they charge the late interest. They will check it, say sorry and interest will be reversed. This had become a routine.

Now the credit card was more of a harassment than any convenience to us. In November 2006, we asked the bank to cancel the card. They will give all sort of assurances but the process of adding late payment interest will continue. We will receive phone calls at inconvenient hours from different people. Some of them will call us defaulters in payment. The damn card had become a nightmare for us.

Now after many months, they had blocked the card. But the harassment continues. The phone calls keep coming telling us to make outstanding payment. The callers are not interested in listening to our side that we have made all payments and nothing is outstanding. When we ask them to send us their details of outstanding, they say that as per bank rules they can not send the details in writing. Such illogical stand by a multi-national bank is difficult to understand.

Sometimes I feel that our Indian system is best. No credit cards, no purchasing on credits, no tension, no harassment.