SBI says husband can't use wife's debit card, court agrees

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Lord Nemesis

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https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...rd-with-spouse-court/articleshow/64485320.cms

On November 14, 2013, Marathahalli resident Vandana gave her debit card with PIN to her husband, Rajesh Kumar, to withdraw Rs 25,000 from a local SBI ATM. Rajesh went to the ATM and swiped the card; the machine delivered a slip showing the money was debited, but the amount was never released. SBI cited the ‘non-transferable’ rule and said the account holder was not the ATM user and turned down the money claims.

Vandana approached the Bangalore IVth Additional District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum on October 21, 2014, alleging that SBI had failed to refund the Rs 25,000 she’d lost in the ATM transaction. She said she had just given birth and could not move out of home, hence had to ask her husband to draw the money on her behalf.

When the ATM did not release the money, Rajesh called the SBI call centre only to be informed that it was an ATM fault and the money would be reverted to the account within 24 hours. With no sign of the money after a day, he approached the bank’s Helicopter Division branch at HAL with a formal complaint. But much to the shock of the couple, SBI allegedly closed the case in a few days, stating the transaction was correct and the customer got the money.

After running from pillar to post, the couple obtained CCTV footage that showed Kumar using the machine, but no cash being dispensed. They further lodged a complaint with the bank, following which an investigation committee ruled that Vandana, the cardholder, is not seen in the footage.

Meanwhile, Vandana, through an RTI, obtained a cash verification report of the ATM for November 16, 2013, which showed excess cash of Rs 25,000 in the machine. The report submitted in the court was later countered by the SBI counsel who produced a report showing no excess cash.

Before approaching the consumer forum, the couple made a final plea to the bank ombudsman who simply ruled, ‘PIN shared, case closed.’

The case went on for over three-and-a-half years. Vandana said SBI should refund her money which was lost due to an ATM flaw, but the bank stood its ground, citing the rule that sharing ATM PIN with someone else was a violation. Further, the bank produced documents, including log records, showing the stated ATM transaction was successful and technically correct.

In its verdict on May 29, 2018, the court ruled that Vandana should have given a self-cheque or an authorisation letter to her husband for withdrawal of Rs 25,000, instead sharing the PIN and making him withdraw the money. The court dismissed the case.
 
wow. how to rob your customers and take advantage of them. what was the woman supposed to do if she was bed ridden? no compassion for the ill.

Even the judge seems like a retard. What about the money that never came out of the atm machine? no ruling on that? why was the bank allowed to keep the money?
SBI and such judges are the reason people should stay away from govt run agencies. when things go south, the entire govt machinery works against you like a team. if its their fault they work against you. if its your fault they work against you. either way you're fckd and see hell and lose all faith in the system.
 
Yes, they just made use of the excuse to avoid paying back the money. Also, given that they produced documents showing that there is no excess cash, it is likely that the money was swiped. I doubt bank would do it for such a small sum, but staff definitely can.

I know that a lot of shams happen at SBI, but this takes the cake.
 
I always transfer through IMPS from my dad's non sbi net banking account to my own, so I never face any issues. This thread made me sad
 
Last year, SBI transferred 100 crore meant for Mid-Day meal program into the account of some private builder and didn't catch it for nearly 2 months till the supposed recipients came knowing at their door. By that time, that fellow has transferred the amount to other accounts and also used up a big part of it.
 
6pack said:
wow. how to rob your customers and take advantage of them. what was the woman supposed to do if she was bed ridden? no compassion for the ill.


SBI and such judges are the reason people should stay away from govt run agencies. when things go south, the entire govt machinery works against you like a team. if its their fault they work against you. if its your fault they work against you. either way you're fckd and see hell and lose all faith in the system.
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just wondering, what do you think might have been the outcome , had it been some private bank
 
^^ Had it been some private bank...

1. The chance of money getting deducted without customer getting it would be extremely low. They ensure decent maintenance of their ATM's
2. Even if such a situation does happen and money gets cut, it would be automatically refunded back almost immediately. (experienced it myself)
3. Even if it doesn't get refunded, they won't scheme to swipe the money themselves and use such excuses to deny the customer.

Private banks are "For profit" businesses. Their reputation is important to them. The hit to their reputation is not worth the measly 25k. They might do it for 2500 crores, but not for 25k. If they see that the money hadn't indeed been issued to customer, they will just refund it back than go through all this.
 
On November 14, 2013, Marathahalli resident Vandana gave her debit card with PIN to her husband, Rajesh Kumar, to withdraw Rs 25,000 from a local SBI ATM. Rajesh went to the ATM and swiped the card; the machine delivered a slip showing the money was debited, but the amount was never released. SBI cited the ‘non-transferable’ rule and said the account holder was not the ATM user and turned down the money claims.
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How did the ATM know it wasn't her withdrawing the money ?
 
ATM doesn't know, it just malfunctioned. They have the video footage from the booth. This is also how the couple proved that money was not dispensed in addition to cash verification report proving that there was 25K excess cash. SBI denied them the money on the basis that the person withdrawing was not the owner of the ATM card while ignoring the fact that the ATM did not dispense the cash. Since a person other than owner of the card went to withdraw money, they say they have no responsibility towards what happened. The court agreed.
 
The error of money not being dispensed but still debited is odd. Has that ever happened to anyone ? usually if there isn't any money in the ATM it doesn't deduct. Just refuses to give anything. This has happened to me numerous times over the previous year

If it happened to her it happened to others too and this would have been brought to the banks attention

I'm looking at something else currently, making an e-payment, then experienced a pay gateway failure. Tried again and its the same thing. So account got debited twice but refund was made only once a few days later, the refund for the second try is missing
 
^^ Its a pretty common scenario with PSU Bank ATM's which don't have good maintenance. ATM's as you might know are maintained by third party agencies. Private banks ensure good maintenance for their ATM's and problems are rare. Even when such a scenario happens, the transaction is almost always reversed automatically when they see that cash was not dispensed.

Maybe PSU banks don't bother with proper integration and such errors result in amount getting deducted. Sometimes, they are reversed, but if it doesn't happen, you are in for a nightmare. In most cases, they bank will just check their own records, if the transaction is recorded as success in their system. (i.e. amount was deducted), they won't bother that you didn't get the money and will tell you that the transaction is a success.
 
Yes, my PSB is 3rd party maintained. Transaction is not reversed. It does not register. If so then its up to banks discretion and if they know you a visit to the manager will fix it.

This means two things
- they can't prevent people from sharing pins so this 'non-transferable' cannot apply. Even if your account gets robbed it will be pretty hard to get the bank to credit what some one else took out. Not impossible though. Somebody posted here a while ago of account being debited from singapore and two months later did get the payment reversed. That was from a CC though

- not deducting in the first place prevents these kinds of problems from occurring. Its hard to prove money was not dispensed
 
blr_p said:
- not deducting in the first place prevents these kinds of problems from occurring. Its hard to prove money was not dispensed
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It can happen and has happened to people even if it is a rare case. Had happened at my dad's branch. They checked the CCTV footage which showed that machine didn't dispense any cash and then checked the balance in the machine at the end of the day and refunded the amount.

This is just a stupid move by SBI, especially if the couple were right. Urgently getting in touch with the right people is very important in such cases. I prefer to use branch ATMs rather than stand alone ones because in that case, the branch manager can help a lot, like my dad did. But it doesn't work in all cases, especially when even the branch ATM might be managed by a third party or central department of the bank.
 
blr_p said:
Yes, my PSB is 3rd party maintained. Transaction is not reversed. It does not register. If so then its up to banks discretion and if they know you a visit to the manager will fix it.

This means two things
- they can't prevent people from sharing pins so this 'non-transferable' cannot apply. Even if your account gets robbed it will be pretty hard to get the bank to credit what some one else took out. Not impossible though. Somebody posted here a while ago of account being debited from singapore and two months later did get the payment reversed. That was from a CC though

- not deducting in the first place prevents these kinds of problems from occurring. Its hard to prove money was not dispensed
Click to expand...

The second one is not really that difficult. ATM's can generate an error when the cash dispense process is not completed which the bank system can process and rollback the transaction.It is more than likely that such a system is in place which is how/why private banks can roll back a transaction when the cash is not dispensed. How ever if the PSU bank systems are not considering these errors and handling them, this is what you would end up with. It is likely that these issues are down to shoddy programming and integration than anything else.

The other way is the surveillance footage. ATM's have camera in the ATM itself and also there will be cameras in the booth. It should not be too difficult to put together evidence of cash not being dispensed.
 
This exact incident didn't happen to me. But once I was depositing 20k using the SBI deposit machine(They have a deposit machine adjacent to their ATM, Yes SBI has a very special ATM not available everywhere through which you can deposit cash). The money went through but the transaction wasn't successful and the machine was stuck with an error code on the screen. I waited for 6-7 mins and was in a state of horror in the process, and was just about to leave when the entire deposit amount came out from the machine, if I hadn't waited then somebody else would've found my money & taken it. I consider myself extremely lucky
 
i mean no offence to anyone here, but how on earth any technically and socially aware people still deal with SBI ?
I fail to understand this point.

One after another there are so many issues with this bank & people still trust and do business with therm, and again crib about it!
if a goat go and dance near slaughterhouse what will happen ?
 
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