Geek Rant Zone

Kotak Mahindra Bank – Epic Fail

// November 4th, 2010 // Fail

Tags: Bank, Epic, Fail, Kotak, Mahindra

I will now narrate 2 separate events that have happened with me, within the 2 months of my having a savings account with Kotak Mahindra Bank, which to me are both EPIC Failures!

1. 27th October morning, as I leave my house for office, I realize I am running low on cash, so I decide to go to the Corporation Bank ATM which is the nearest ATM from my residence. I have had an HDFC Bank account for over 2 years and have been using my HDFC Debit Card in this Corporation Bank ATM for nearly 6 months since it came up.So I get to the ATM, decide to use my new Kotak Mahindra Bank – Debit card for the first time to withdraw some cash. I go through the complete process in my attempt to withdraw the amount, only to be disappointed in the end by my transaction being declined with a weird error – Issuer Unavailable. Although a little confused, but running short of patience and time, I decide to well go ahead and use my HDFC Debit Card instead, only to be disappointed again to see the same error.

   Although a little irritated, I wasted no time and continued to my office. As I reach my office and settle down, I see in my mail box a notification email from the Kotak Mahindra Bank with the subject Transaction Success Alert – ATM Cash Withdrawal. I quickly opened the email and to add to my agony of the utter waste of time at the ATM this morning, Kotak Mahindra had actually debited the amount that I had tried to withdraw from my bank account!

   Not a good start to the day, I thought, I quickly opened their website (www.kotak.com), got their customer care number and called them up. After a few key presses I was finally able to get to a customer representative on the other end. I narrated the entire happening once again, requested them to lodge a complain, which they did. However, as if the day hadn’t already had a rough beginning, to my utter disgust & surprise, the customer representative told me that the process of reversal of the transaction would take upto 12 working days! I am now NEVER going to use my Kotak Mahindra Bank Debit Card in an ATM. NEVER EVER!

2. As if the previous days happenings weren’t enough to convince me how much of a FAILURE, Kotak Mahindra Bank is, on 28th October I had yet another rather interesting event and this time, it does not involve an ATM or a fake transaction.

   I am a music lover, and enjoy playing the guitar. I love the finger picking style of guitar playing and am often exploring the web trying to get my hands on nice soothing arrangements which are easy enough for me to try. I happened to come across Kelly Valleau’s video Scientist – Coldplay and I was excited to see that he offered the tabs / scores to his arrangements on his website. I quickly went over to his website, checked out a few more of his videos and was quite excited.

   After a little while, I decided that subscribing to his site would be totally worth it. I clicked on the subscribe button on his site, which took me to paypal, I logged in with my paypal account and I decided to use my Kotak Mahindra Bank Debit Card this time. I added my Debit Card details into Paypal and tried to go through with the transaction, but not to my surprise, the card was declined. I tried a couple of more times, with some hope, but gave up soon and after quite a few curse words to Kotak Mahindra Bank and a few laughs, I just let it go and continued exploring youtube.

   After a while, when I check my phone, I see that I received an SMS Alert from Kotak Mahindra Bank. And I swear to GOD this is what it read :

   Your transaction at PAYPAL, SG using Kotak Debit Card XXXX on 28th-OCT-2010 XX:XX:XX IST could not be processed due to Card not swiped properly. The transaction reference No is XXXXXXXXXXX. Swipe the card properly and try again. .

   Since I had tried a couple of times, I had a couple of those SMS’s.

Now that my friends are both EPIC Failures! As of now I am stuck with Kotak Mahindra Bank, and since I have used it barely in the past 2 months since I hold an account, I am going to give them a little more time (for more EPIC Fails).

Kotak Mahindra Bank - Epic Fail, 9.0 out of 10 based on 4 ratings