BBanking Ombudsman Casebook
By problem

Find the cases closest to yours

The same 40 complaints, grouped by what went wrong, with a note on how each kind tends to go.

Your email is on someone else's bank record

You get loan alerts, statements or OTP-adjacent messages for a stranger. Usually another customer typed your address by mistake and the bank never verified it; sometimes it is left over from a bank merger.

How it goes: the bank removes or deactivates the address once the Ombudsman asks. Compensation is uneven: where the bank admitted its own error or mishandled the complaint I was paid, where it said the other customer supplied the address I was not. Nobody has yet explained to me why unverified email addresses are accepted.

Ask for: removal from every record, written confirmation, and a statement of whether any of your own data was exposed.

Something is wrong on your credit report

An enquiry you never authorised, a closed loan showing open, an account that should not be there.

How it goes: well against the lender that reported it, badly against the bureau. A hard enquiry with no application behind it got removed with ₹10,000. Complaints against the bureau itself went nowhere.

Ask for: correction at the bureau by the lender, with the bureau's confirmation, by a date.

The full account of the credit bureau complaints, including the RTI replies →

A card or loan application was rejected or stalled

How it goes: you lose if you ask for approval and can win if you ask for the reason. Lenders are expected to tell you in writing the main reason for declining a card. A vague reason, or a late one, is a service failure. A stalled application often simply gets processed once you complain.

A card dispute or chargeback was refused

How it goes: poorly. If the bank raised the dispute with the card network and the network or merchant declined it, the Ombudsman has so far found no deficiency by the bank, twice. While a dispute is still inside its network timeline the complaint is premature in substance.

The full account of the laptop chargeback →

Better route: if the goods were defective, the claim is against the seller, in the consumer commission. Use the Ombudsman only for what the bank itself did wrong: refusing to raise the dispute, raising it late, or not telling you the outcome.

Wrong charges, fees and invoices

How it goes: well when you can show the bank departed from its own schedule or kept repeating an error, and badly when the cost came from a published term or from the card network.

The bank will not give a straight answer

How it goes: these are quick. A request for information the bank must disclose gets answered, sometimes with an apology letter.

Compensation was promised and not paid

How it goes: a fresh complaint quoting the original number has worked both times, within days.

Complaints I filed too early or twice

Here so you do not repeat them.