‘Customer is the king’, is it just a saying which makes no sense in today’s business world? Looks like its true. Today’s big business which have grown due to their customers no longer care about them (actually us!).

The manager is shouting at the customer, “Pay Rs.18000 to get your account closed, or else we can’t close it.” Seems weird doesn’t it. When I dug a little deeper into the story I found out that the customer had an account with the bank several years ago. The account had to have a minimum balance of Rs.2500 per month on the average. At some point of time, looks like he had requested through phone to get his account closed but the bank told him to submit an account closure form, but he forgot. He withdrew all his balance and the account had zero balance.

Five years has passed off by and each month the bank debited the penalty amount from his account (for not maintaining the minimum balance) through the years accumulating his negative balance. Now he gets a legal notice that he owes the bank Rs.18000. He has to pay that amount for not using the services of the bank for 5 years!

Isn’t this day light robbery? Banks no longer care about their customers. They could have called up the customer after 3 months of negative balance and intimated him that his account has still not been closed. What can consumers do? Lament about this story to their friends. What else? Any ideas?