No relief fir SBI customer who put amount in wrong account

No relief for SBI customer who put ₹49k in wrong a/c

Petlee.Peter@timesgroup.com

Bengaluru:22.06.2018

Keying in 8 instead of 0 on the cash deposit machine (CDM) left a State Bank of India customer poorer by ₹49,500 and brought nearly a year of his efforts to nought at the consumer court. While the bank said he was not eligible for a refund as his complaint lacked specifics, the court dismissed the case as one of human error.

The “error” was committed by Mahindra Kumar Yamanappa when he deposited the amount purportedly into his savings account through a CDM in Kalaburagi in Karnataka on July18, 2017.

Having made the deposit that afternoon, Yamanappa waited for the amount to show up in his account. When two days passed and no money was credited, Yamanappa approached his branch in Kalaburagi and lodged a complaint on July 20.

Apparently unaware of his mistake, Yamanappa cited his account number and sought to know why the amount had not been credited. The branch responded on August 30, 2017, after Yamanappa’s second complaint. By then, he had also gone to police, suspecting his account had been hacked.

Little did he know that it was a lost case. On August 3, 2017 — 14 days after he had informed bank authorities — Khan Shabab, an SBI customer in Adilabad in Telangana, swiped his card at an ATM, found an excess of ₹49,500 in his account and withdrew the entire sum.

In its response, SBI said the money had gone to Shabab’s account as Yamanappa had mistakenly keyed in 8 instead of 0. The SBI branch manager claimed that the bank authorities had written to the Adilabad branch on August 16 — 27 days after Yamanappa’s first complaint — and asked their counterparts in Telangana to retrieve the cash. That was that.

After four months of running around to retrieve his money, Yamanappa filed a complaint against SBI at the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum in Kalaburagi on November 28. In the litigation that ensued, he accused SBI authorities of failing to act in time to block his money though he had lodged a complaint within 48 hours of the deposit.

SBI’s counsel argued that the bank was not at fault since the customer had entered the wrong account number. Further, it was stated that Yamanappa, in his initial CDM complaint, failed to mention the erroneous account number and insisted that the money had been deposited to his account.