Beware of Kotak. Review on Kotak Mahindra Bank

I took a car loan from Kotak Prime. It was arranged at the car dealership. I had purchased 3 cars from the same dealership before with the same Kotak loan and had found it pretty convenient. This time Kotak showed their true colors. In December 2009 I got a call from them saying whether they could come and collect money for my car EMI? I was shocked to hear this kind of request and the guy on the other side said it is because I had not paid my EMI! When I told him that my EMI goes through an ECS with the bank it can not get dishonored. He gave me a number to call. Meanwhile my bank investigated and told me that when Kotak put up their ECS claim they missed a digit and hence the ECS got rejected. My branch manager then sent a DD of the same amount to Kotak and also rang them to explain the issue (such branch managers do exist by the way). Nothing happened after that till my loan got repaid in July 2010.

I then got a notice from Kotak in August asking me to pay Rs. 7000 for delayed payment of my loan ref: ECS rejection in December. They refused to give my hypothecation certificate till I paid up! When I called them up the executive said that I had no balance in the account and hence ECS was rejected and I had to pay the penalty. When I sent them my bank statement which clearly showed that I had more than sufficient balance she told me that there is no provision for waiving penalty charges! I demanded to speak to their senior mangers but they refused. Finally I got hold of their customer care chief who waived off the charges in 10 minutes and sent my papers in 24 hours. I then received 5 post dated cheques from Kotak 1 week down the line. They could have used the cheque in December rather than threatening me with a penalty! Please understand how they systematically tried to extract money from me when there was no reason even to raise a doubt about repayment. We do not have a regulator who can slap them on their knuckles and most of us would have paid the 700 rs to avoid a headache. kotak has gone scot free! So beware of all these car loan guys.