I went to apply for a credit card… the agents here come near the company gate and take our details and fill out our applications there. Few thing i noticed about applying for Credit Cards…
* When they call us about the credit card offers, they promise loads of stuff as offers, etc but when u check on the website, it turns out that these offers are time bound and very often, have expired by the time you apply
* The stuff that the agents say are also very ambiguous
* I saw many people just submitting their documents and signing at all places that the agent asked them to, without even looking at the text below which they were putting their signature
* It was only one guy who actually asked the agent “you’re not asking me to sign in some wrong places and all right?”; i mean, will the agent ever say “no sir… i’m making u sign in few places which will help me cheat you”
The point is that, we hear about these cases of credit card frauds by the banks and agencies every single day but in spite of all this, some folks are just putting their signatures at places without even giving a single look at the text above their signatures. Shouldnt we be more careful when it involves the money that we are earning?
After so many reports in the media, shouldn’t people be exercising more care when applying for financial instruments?
One experience that i had with a tele-caller for credit cards was this
When she called me, i was quite impressed by all the offers that they were giving. So i told them that i was interested and would like to meet their correspondent and fill out forms but on the condition that i’d take the application form with me, study it for a day, fill it out myself and submit it to their correspondent the next day. But she was reluctant to do this saying “the application will say ‘lifetime free card’ in bold letters sir, so you wont have to worry about anything”. I insisted that I would apply for the card only if i can have the application with me for a day to study it and that i’d not sign the form without filling in the details myself. I had to argue with her for quite a while and finally she said that she’d get back to me about this and never called back.
A caller from HSBC agreed to my conditions and i was able to take the application home and fill it in myself after reading it.
Many of us think that the agents are doing us a world of favour by just taking our signatures and then filling out all the details themselves but in reality, they might fill in things that are not related to us or subscribe us to services that we never wanted in the first place. There have also been reports of agents forging your signatures on some other places in the form where your credit card account may be auto debited for payments towards insurance plans, etc.
Bottomline, Please ensure the following when applying for credit cards
* Fill in the details yourself
* strike out signature fields which you deem unnecessary
* Read the declaration text carefully before signing under it
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