In the Court of the
Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, Unit -I, Kolkata,
8B, Nelie Sengupta Sarani, 4th Floor, Kolkata-700087.
CDF/Unit-I/Case No.352/2010.
1) Sri Amar Nath Banerjee,
Flat 2D, 6/1/1 Anil Moitra Road, Kolkata-19 and
24/1/1B, Durga Charan Mukherjee St. Kolkata-3. ---------- Complainant
---Versus---
1) The Manager, Card Division, ICICI Bank Ltd.
Empire Complex, 2nd Floor, 414 SK Marg,
Lower Parel, Mumbai-400013.
2) The Manager, Customer Care Cell,
ICICI Bank Ltd. Kolkata, P.S. Ballygunge. ---------- Opposite Parties
Present : Sri Sankar Nath Das, President.
Smt. Samiksha Bhattacharya, Member
Order No. 21 Dated 21-08-2013.
The case of the complainant in short is that the following credit cards have been mostly issued unsolicited to the complainant by the o.ps. during a course of the last 8 years or so.
ICICI Bank Card No.4477 4702 3098 0006, (ii) ICICI Bank Card No.4132 8940 2697 1001, (iii) ICICI Bank Card No.5176 5300 0004 3003, (iv) ICICI Bank Card No.9401 2700 4083 1005, (v) ICICI Bank Card No.3770 4123 5932 000.
And the complainant had accepted the aforesaid credit cards and has been using the same over the years satisfactorily due to some facilities offered by the o.ps.
On a sudden scrutiny of the card accounts recent statement the complainant has noticed some gross discrepancies in the application of rate of interest on the outstanding balances of the aforesaid card account exposing unlawfully the complainant to huge loss of funds in as much as the intermittent and often the increase in the monthly rate of interest has never been advised or intimated to the complainant in advance. By such irregular, illegal and arbitrary acts and practices the o.ps. have unlawfully denied the complainant his rights to know and understand the costs / prices of transactions prior to putting them through.
On none of the occasions when the monthly rates of interest in the card accounts have been increased over all these years, the o.ps. willfully failed and neglected to advise the complainant of such increases made and applied rendering the complainant helplessly ignorant and optionless about the costs of transaction.
The issue being now raised by complainant is not the intermittent increase in the interest rates in the card accounts but the arbitrary and unlawful repeated denial by the o.ps. of the rights of the complainant to know and understand the cost / price of the transaction before he puts it through and/or to ascertain and avoid possible extortions by being made entirely ignorant about the rise in interest rates. Hence the case was filed by the complainant with the prayer contained in the petition of complaint.
O.ps. had entered their appearance in this case by filing w/v and denied all the material allegations labeled against them and prayed for dismissal of the case. Ld. lawyer of o.ps. in the course of argument submitted that the case has got no merit and the same is liable to be dismissed.
Decision with reasons:-
We have gone through the pleadings of the parties, evidence and documents in particular and on perusal of the entire materials on record we find that the credit cards issuing branch of the bank has not been impleaded as a party in this case and the same is highly fatal and as such, we are constrained to hold that the complainant has failed to prove his case and is not entitled to relief.
Hence, ordered,
That the case is dismissed on contest without cost.