SBI credit card holders in the lurch in Bangalore

Customers using the credit cards of the State Bank of India have been left in the lurch following a rift between its cheque collection agent and service provider.

The collection agent, Skypak, discontinued its association, after its contract had expired on December 1, 2010, without implementing an alternative mechanism.

The customers became aware of the problem only after receiving notice for non-payment of dues. Further enquiry revealed that more than 10,000 were yet to be cleared by the service provider, GE Capital.

“I dropped eight cheques since last December, towards payment of dues. There are several others like me who have been left in a lurch because of the problems between these two companies, GE Capital and Skypak cheque collection facility. GE Capital is the service provider for credit cards issued by the State Bank of India and Skypak was appointed by GE to collect the cheques from the customers,” said a customer, who identified himself only by his first name, Amar.

The customers, however, were not willing to blame the bank. “It is entirely the mistake of the private players, GE Capital and Skypak. They have not cited any reasons for this but said that the contract between them had ended on December 1 last year. But our attempts to reach GE Capital did not materialise,” another customer, who did not wanted to be named, said.

According to Skypak, they had handed over 6,000 cheques to the GE Capital’s head office at Gurgaon in Haryana. “We have handed over nearly 5,000 to 6,000 cheques from our customers. We hope to revive the contract by the end of this month,” Nabil, Skypak’s operations in-charge, said from Mumbai.

Attempts to contact GE failed. An operator at its Gurgaon office redirected this correspondent to another phone number. Repeated calls made to that number went unanswered.