Hidden Charges of Saving Bank Account
Saving bank accounts can have lot of hidden charges which most of the times we are not aware of. A few days back one of my friends was looking at his ICICI Bank statement and found 3 consecutive deductions of Rs 28.09 with the description of POSDEC CHG/11-06-14/8833/25ST3. As happens most of the times it’s almost impossible to figure out what this alien description meant!
A little research and asking friends revealed that POSDEC CHG means Point of Sale Decline Charges.
This means you tried using your debit card for paying something at the merchant but the transaction was declined due to insufficient funds in the account.
Also Read: 22 Hidden Charges in Saving Bank Account
This is what happens at the merchant side. You gave your debit card for payment. The transaction gets declined but you and the merchant does not know the reason for decline. As most of the times network failure/ wrong pin etc are responsible. So the merchant swipes the card multiple times but every time it’s declined! The unfortunate part ICICI deducts this POSDEC CHG of Rs 28.09 for every swipe! So in my friend’s case it was tried 3 times and hence there are 3 consecutive deductions!
My friend had gone to his usual departmental store for his regular purchase and gave his ICICI debit card for payment. The problem was he had 2 accounts with ICICI Bank and by mistake he gave the card which did not have sufficient funds. The transaction did not go through the card so he paid by cash and moved on. He only realized his mistake when he got to see these charges after more than a month in his statement! I am sure this can happen to lot many people especially who have multiple cards of the same bank!
As a customer I find these charges completely unethical and then series of deduction for the same transaction – I have no words!
It’s not like all the transactions that are declined are because of insufficient funds. On the contrary the most declines are due to network issues! But how a customer can know the decline reason?
The bank should have either sent SMS to the customer that the decline is due to insufficient funds or may have charged only once for one transaction.
In such cases “prevention is better than cure”. So if such charges are reflecting in your statement you can talk to ICICI call center executive and tell him to reverse these charges. You have two problems here:
A simple Google search and you would see multiple complaints regarding such charges online. In one extreme case I found the customer was charged 19 consecutive times probably for the same transaction!
RBI wants to encourage payments through Debit/credit cards but such practices by banks would be highly detrimental! Probably some rules/clarifications from RBI regarding these unethical charges might help.
There are few things you should take care while using your debit card:
Do you know of other banks who have such unethical practices or have you or your friends gone through this? If yes please leave comment to make everyone aware of such practices!
Everyone hates paying taxes and always are on lookout for Options to Save Tax. However…
Are you worried and confused about Lien amount in SBI? Well you are not alone.…
Get details of latest Sovereign Gold Bond Price, Issue details, taxation and how to invest.…
Download the Excel based Income Tax Calculator India for FY 2020-21 (AY 2021-22). This compares…
Piramal Capital & Housing Finance, has come out with Piramal Capital & Housing Finance Ltd…
IIFL Home Loan, the Housing Finance company from IIFL Group has come out with IIFL…
View Comments
I have been charged 28.75 INR 105 times, I repeat 105 times because of insufficient funds, for a card that was already blocked! It was because some auto payment was enabled. The charges were taken after I had blocked my card!
Please advice how to reverse the charges!
Call customer care they might reverse it
This happened to me as well....ICICI bank is the worlds No. 1 ****** bank...they squeeze money from customers for eveything...I going to discontinue my account with them after horrible 8 years
This happened with me too. ICICI bank deducted four times 28.75 for the trans. of 239.76 petrol charges, when the balance was 1494. Really a bad practice.
For donkey work they did free in the time of Demonetisation, they are now compensating for the same.
So friends, should not our account be credited with some amount when their ATM machines shows us insufficient funds. these banks are just making money using a cheap idea.
i totally agree with you!
i have checked my account after make one Card payment. its really shocking,6 times I found that 28.75 rs had been deducted. I tried to call customer care, i never ever see that worst service in banking sector. Better i need to change to any other nationalized bank. HOW CAN I REVERSE IT???.
YOu can't do much about it other than being careful in future or changing your bank!
i got my figures burnt today with the same ICICI bank. tried contacting the customer support but no help at all. i wonder why then call them customer support. five times they charged me consequently. why cant they send or display a msg that the funds are insufficient. I am planning to shift to other nationalized bank instead of struggling with this UNETHICAL ICICI Pvt bank. Mr Amit can you kindly suggest me a good bank where customers are not taken for granted. Iam thinking of SBI, how good is SBI in comparison to ICICI
All banks operate as cartel in India. You will find lot of unreasonable charges both in government/private bank. The only thing is to be careful and try to avoid these charges as much as possible.
ICICI is full of thieves
Very unfortunate. We have such a system. Today I also got the same debit from ICICI Bank and I was trying to find out what it is. Now I realise I have tried using my ICICI bank credit card. Just because of the keys on the swapping machine of the trader was not proper, one digit was not pressed properly and I got a pin error and transaction decline. If the bank is not charged anything for such failed transaction by VISA/Master/AMex, such charges by ICICI bank cannot be justified.
I agree with you--- these are unethical charges!
With out my notice they have dedicated 3 times 28.09... this his very bad for the ICICI bank, i will change my bank account to nationalised bank.
This is easy money that banks resort to climb the annual revenue ladder by taking money out of savings bank customers.
thats true!
They are fooling General Public and RBI ....Just Imagine deducting such amounts from say 1 million account gradually in a year ....how much money they are making .........................To get number of account in ICICI refrence the following “We have around 18.5 million zero basic savings bank deposit accounts and by the end of this year, we expect to have close to 20 million such accounts,” said Rajiv Sabharwal, executive director, ICICI Bank, the country’s largest private sector lender.
Man simply multipying 1 million out of 18.5 ...these people would make 1 million bucks......RBI is sleeping I think .....
The banking service in India is getting worse with lot of hidden charges and random deductions from savings account! Agree RBI does not care much...