Bengaluru based Karthik Srinivasan is a popular digital marketing professional, whose Linked In profile was a part of the top 7 seven power profiles in India for 2015-2016. Karthik who is also a National Lead, Social with O&M, has a verified account on Twitter with 26.8 K followers. So it is only but natural that India takes him very seriously.
Karthik has made headlines with his online Saytagraha against HDFC Bank that has been going on for over 50 days.
So what makes Karthik an angry man? He was unhappy with the banks decision to charge its customers Rs 100 per quarter for a virtual relationship manager programme. A disclaimer in fine print at the end claims that users can opt out of this one year free trial at any point. So what is the problem? The bank users are signed up by default and are unaware of this scheme. Karthik believes the bank owes its customers an apology and has decided to tweet all through 2017, unless of course HDFC apologises before that.
Karthik realised that he had been initiated into this scheme last year. “On 30 Jan this year, I received a mail interaction that clearly indicated that I had experienced this service for one year. But I won’t hold that against them as I should have checked my mails. They mentioned that it was a one year free trial and then becomes a paid service. The main flaw in this communication is that it says customer will be charged from this quarter onwards. Interestingly the mail says it’s an invite only, opt out option. I instantly clicked on the mail and opted out.”
Ask him why doesn’t he ask for a refund instead of merely seeking an apology, Karthik admits, “Absolutely. I don’t think I have been charged as I opted out. But after my first tweet, 1000 plus people wrote to me saying that they were shocked about being charged for something they have no idea about.”
Karthik believes that this concept is ethically wrong and is strongly protesting online on behalf of customers. “The fundamental premise is that you can’t assume on behalf of the customer that he or she is willing to pay for it. You have to pitch it to customer as an idea mentioning the service offered, how much you charge, so instead of opting out, the customer can actually choose to opt in.”
Tell him that happens with virtually all banks and has become an industry norm and he agrees. “This was a common practice with telecom based companies that provided value added services. They would hoist such schemes upon customers using the ploy; let us know if you don’t want it. The fee is small and I have no issues paying it but should be my choice,” asserts Karthik who confesses that this is the first time has taken up such a cause. “I have always been very non controversial. In fact, if I’m driving on the road and if someone drives on the wrong side, I move away. But this just seems so completely unethical and so very wrong for HDFC to assume they think they can get away because of their size,” he adds.
Has the bank got back to him? “Yes they responded on twitter, and clearly mentioned that they have been fair and transparent, so my counter query was why opting out instead of opting in? They then talked about the services the scheme entails and I said that I’m not questioning those services. They mailed me again with the same response and I repeated my answer. I wrote to the banking ombudsman, got the id from the RBI website and even wrote to the banks’ board of directors, but have got no response,” he adds.
Karthik insists that he will follow through his plan of till the end of the year. “And then it is upto them to find their moral compass.”
The journey has begun, now it remains to be seen how his crusade will eventually pan out.
