Caught in the card trap

Saugata Roy, a webmaster at a Calcutta-based media company, had resolved never to own a credit card. First of all, he didn’t like the idea of being under the burden of credit and, secondly, he did not understand how the system worked. But his resolve was not to last for long. A smart agent of a credit card company persuaded him to opt for a “lifetime free” credit card.

Roy had no idea that this would be the start of a long and harrowing experience. “I was told that the card would be active for life even if I didn’t use it at all. But in less than a month, they started calling me regularly, urging me to make at least one transaction for it to become active,” he says. So Roy paid through his card once and thought the matter had ended there. But it was not to be.

A few months later, the bank began to press him to go for a family insurance policy of ICICI Prudential that was being offered at a discount to the card’s customers. Initially, Roy said that he was not interested. “But they kept on nagging me and in sheer frustration I said ‘ok, send me the details’,” he says.

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