Indian banks are notorious for delaying credit of international wire transfers. Usually, they allege lack of clarity in customer account details. I, and many of my friends, share this experience and even the best Indian banks require intervention at the highest management level for a customer to get her own money. Further proof came from Uma Iyer from New York who wrote to say that when she tried to send a wire transfer to India from New York, the bank discouraged her saying, ‘‘Indian banks are not good at keeping track of money’’.

Her sister living in Germany learnt it the hard way. She wired money to Indian Bank in Chennai which never reached the recipient. Despite the bank’s unhelpful attitude she discovered that it was credited to somebody’s Kolkata account. She finally asked her bank to pull back her money to the German account, but that too has not worked, because the Indian bank did not cooperate.

I sent this complaint to the RBI Governor, but it is not clear if that worked either. Recently a foreign bank bundled a Royal Sundaram insurance policy with its credit card. While informing the customer that the premium will be debited to the credit card account, it set up a separate loan account to debit the monthly premium (without specific authorisation) and created records to the effect that the customer had ‘‘agreed to pay the annual premium through Equated Monthly Installments (EMIs)’’ (this too had no specific okay from the client).

Having done that, the bank (a common complaint about most credit card issuers) omits to send the credit card statements in time and collects late payment fees from the customer. This is collected separately on the card and on the insurance account with service charges being billed separately at three per cent. None of this was clearly explained to the customer while opening the account.

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