People choose banks to keep their money safe but a person was on the verge of losing his hard-earned money as he made a mistake while depositing it in bank and the bank officials also didn’t act on time when he approached them for help.
As per a report in TOI, an SBI customer lost Rs. 49,500 as he entered a wrong number while depositing money through the cash deposit machine (CDM).
The name of the victim is Mahindra Kumar Yamanappa and he deposited money on July 18, 2017 in a CDM situated at north Karnataka’s Kalaburagi.
When he didn’t get the receipt of the transaction for almost 2 days, he visited the SBI branch at Kalaburagi’s SB Temple Road and filed a complaint on July 20. He didn’t get any satisfactory answer from the bank officials regarding as to why money is not credited to his account.
After his problem did not resolve, he filed another complaint with the bank in mid-August and also approached the police, doubting that his account had been hacked.
On August 3, 2017, another SBI customer from Telengana’s Adilabad named Khan Shabab found that his account was credited with Rs. 49,500 and he withdrew the full amount.
At last on August 30, 2017, bank authorities came up with their answer and revealed that Mahindra mistakenly entered 8 instead of 0 on the CDM because of which the amount was transferred to Shabab’s account. The Adilabad branch was instructed to retrieve the cash.
On November 28, Mahindra filed a complaint with District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum against SBI, accusing it of not taking prompt action despite the fact that he made a complaint within 48 hours. The lawyer of the bank held Mahindra responsible for the goof-up as it was he who entered the number wrong and also didn’t mention the wrong number to the bank in his first complaint. The judge also slammed the customer for not telling the bank about the wrong account number and asked the bank to reverse the transactions.
The case has been dismissed by District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum on June 5, 2018, and this is what a bank official told TOI,
“In Yamanappa’s case, had SBI staff acted swiftly on the initial complaint, it would have been clear that the deposit was erroneous and the money could have been blocked before the Telangana customer withdrew it 16 days after. Banking laws state that branch officials can request the receiving customer’s account to be frozen if an erroneous excess transfer is made.”
There is no doubt that Mahindra Kumar Yamanappa made a mistake but if the SBI officials acted promptly, the transactions would have been reversed and the whole matter had been sorted out properly.
