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Consumers made 17,603 complaints related to credit cards to the Reserve Bank of India's ombudsman office between 1 April 2008 and 31 March 2009, up 74.2% from 10,107 complaints during the previous 12-month period. Domestic financial institutions accounted for 5,950 complaints during the most-recent period, or nearly 33.8% of the total, the central bank says. State-owned issuers accounted for 5,916 complaints (33.6%), while foreign-owned financial institutions account for 5,737 complaints (32.6%). State Bank of India, one of the country's largest issuers, had the most complaints, 4,295Complaints are increasing for such reasons as improper disclosure of card charges and inaccurate information from "direct selling agents" banks hire to attract credit cardholders, Ravi Nawal, an India-based banking analyst with United States-based research firm Celent, tells CardLine Global. "In addition, there have been instances of inaccuracies in terms of transaction aggregation and accounting," Nawal says. "Outsourcing of servicing operations has resulted in service-quality issues and consequent increases in complaints." Several issuers are considering "in-sourcing critical customer-service functions," he adds.
