A Call

A few months back, my bank offered to increase my credit limit to about 7 times the original limit without any regard to my salary

(I smelled desperation there)

I anyways opted for it as I had the lure of a platinum card at the back of my mind, which I knew will come through with the increased credit limit.

The plot worked and I got the first platinum card of my life! But still having such a credit limit had its own set of risks and I decided to get it reduced from a few lacs to a few thousands, as that’s what I believe my credit worthiness to be. For some weird reason (as with most other decisions in my life), I decided to go in stages and kept the first target at 1 lac (still keeping it on a higher side). So I called up the bank and told the cust care exec to get it done and it was done immediately.

Well almost immediately as I was told that though its done, it will still take a few days to actually be done.

I swear.. this technology thing amazes me. How can something be done and still not be done.

I strongly suspect that they don't have someone sitting there who is reducing my limit by some 100 rs per second and so it will take some 2 days or so to reach that level.

Of all the people in this world, only these tech geeks can get away by making such statements!!

So here I was impressed with the speed of the service.

Then I asked if I will get any confirmation that the limit has been officially reduced and the exec gave an immediate suggestion that I can try a transaction above a lac and it will get rejected, so it will prove that we have reduced the limit.

The suggestion is of course a logical way to test and is also technically correct!

But somehow it didn’t go too well with me and probably is not the best way to get that confirmation..

Anyways..

The first point is...what will a poor guy like me shop for 1 lac plus??

and that too in a single transaction.. as suggested...

Probably there is a way out..

I can go to some high fundoo place like the louis vuitton showroom at taj and act like a guy who has arrived in life and try to buy something for that amount purely with the intention of testing the bank's efficiency... then probably I can get the answer.

So that solves my problem..

But hey...wait a minute...

what if, just in case, the transaction goes through????

I can hear in my mind some tele execs telling me

" I am extremely sorry sir, but our system was down, so we couldn't process your request. Please be rest assured that this would be done soon. Is there anything else may I help you with?"

or even better.... ( this has happened to me so many times)

"Sir, we are not able to trace your request in the system. I don’t think any such request has been raised. Do you have the request number? ( wtf...of course I don’t have.. I never have). Do you want me to raise the request again? No thank you. Thank you for calling the bank. Have a pleasant day"

Frankly, my day can't be pleasant after this!!

These bankers always manage to pull a fast one on you. So in all probability, I will most likely end up with following things..

1. Disgust

2. Useless stuff which I have piled on

3. A big debt...

Probably I will give this idea a miss... after all curiosity doesn’t need to be satisfied.. at least not always...

-Abhishek Kochar