Prefixing ‘Mr’ before name of Chandigarh woman costs bank dear

Ramkrishan Upadhyay

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 28

The District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Chandigarh, has directed a bank to pay compensation to a woman for prefixing Mr before her name wrongly.

Kavita, a resident of Sector 32, Chandigarh, approached the commission through advocate Devinder Kumar after she failed to transfer the fee of a foreign college due to the bank’s mistake.

Kavita said she opened a savings account with the State Bank of India, Sector 32 branch, Chandigarh, in 2018 mentioning her name in the account opening form as “Miss Kavita”. In the passbook issued by the bank, her name was mentioned as “Mr Kavita”.

The complainant said when she brought the mistake to the notice of the bank, an official corrected it manually in the passbook. The official also assured her of correcting the mistake in the computer/online record.

Kavita said she received an offer letter from a college based in Canada on January 6, 2020. As per the visa rules, the student must have a GIC account (guaranteed investment certificate) for getting a student visa through which the student will be getting a particular amount for her survival.

Accordingly, her account was opened in Scotiabank in the name of “Miss Kavita” on January 14, 2020. A confirmation was received from the bank. The bank, through an email, directed her to make the payment.

She mentioned her name as Kavita in the online documents for Scotiabank. She visited the SBI Sector 32 branch for transferring money to the Scotiabank account.

The SBI branch demanded certain information from her, which she provided along with emails received from Scotiabank. She said for transferring the amount, the bank filled an online form and showed a printed sheet to her wherein the complainant’s name was mentioned as Mr Kavita instead of Miss Kavita.

However, the bank again assured her that it was a technical issue and the money would be transferred to her Scotiabank account. She said the Sector 32 bank transferred an amount of Rs5,69,796 to the Scotiabank account on January 20, 2020, and gave her an acknowledgement slip. The bank charged Rs553.20 as commission and Rs602.82 as service charge. A total of Rs5,70,952.02 was debited from her Sector 32 bank account.

However, she received a rejection letter on January 24, 2020, from Scotiabank informing her that the amount could not be accepted due to “ordering customer title does not match”.

On February 3, 2020, an amount of Rs5,45,570 was credited to her SBI account. She said due to the wrongful act of the bank, she suffered a loss of Rs25,382.

The bank denied all charges. It also claimed that the difference in the amount i.e. Rs25,382 had already been refunded to the complainant, so she suffered no financial loss.

After hearing the arguments, the commission found the bank guilty of deficiency in service. The commission directed the bank to pay Rs7,000 as compensation and litigation expenses to the complainant within a month.

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