The Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission, based on the report filed by its investigative arm DGIR, issued a notice asking the bank to reply in four weeks.
Imposing penalties on late payment without ensuring whether or not the monthly statement has reached the user, failure to issue acknowledgement on cheque payments as well furnish details of its grievance redressal machinery were the deceptive practices named by the DGIR in its report.
The DGIR recommended action against the multinational for misleading customers and violating Reserve Bank of India guidelines. The anti-monopoly body is already conducting a judicial probe into the credit card business of Citibank and HSBC, besides two Indian lenders ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank.
The DGIR also mentioned that ABN Amro was doing credit card business in the country through Direct Sales Agents, who were working either as independent contractors or on commission basis.
These DSAs were soliciting business from general public, giving an impression that they were the direct agents of the bank.
This led customers to believe that promises they made were as good as those made by the bank's officer, DGIR said. The report added that the Most Important Terms and Conditions document was not given to the customer and hence information such as interest free grace period, schedule of charges, method of calculation of interest, penal charges and other levies were invariably not known to the customer.
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