Radha Consultancy : Can I use all services online?

Thursday, 7 January 2021

Can I use all services online?

Part 1 - Marketing and Convenience

The only good thing that Covid-19 brought is the increasing number of services online. SIP can be easily started from home through online. Can a SIP that was started also be stopped? The answer is yes, you can. But it is not as easy as to start a SIP. The marketing suggests all services are available online, but the customers receive only a few. There are a lot of examples, let us see the ones that we often come across.

Example 1 - 3 in 1 Account

Bundled bank savings account, demat account and trading account is called 3 in 1 account. Agents say we can easily open this kind of account by filling the forms from the comfort of home. No agent will come home to close this 3 in 1 account. We must go to three different corporate offices and fill out several forms and close these accounts individually. It will take not weeks, but months to close all the three accounts. As we know, 8 million such new accounts have been opened recently. Opening is fun, closing is pain. These new account openers will face the pain when they intend to close, unless the process is revamped in the course of time.

Example 2 - Flexi Deposit in banks

We know the service of fixed deposits that banks offer. We can do that online. Besides normal bank FD, there is one advanced flexi deposit scheme which is also available to customers. Most banks do not offer online opening of this flexi deposits. I don’t know the actual reason. The customer benefits more than the bank in this service. I guess probably this could be one of the reasons in not allowing to do it online.

Example 3 - Booking airline tickets

We can easily do the online seat reservations for air tickets. It is easy to book it but difficult to cancel it. Simply because many airline companies do not have a simple method of canceling online just like how IRCTC offers. Usually for cancellation of airline tickets, we need to call their call centers and go through tedious auto voice response systems.

Example 4 - SIP

We may have started the SIP either under pressure from agents or by the marketing skill of sales representatives. If anytime we feel sip is not our cup of tea, usually those who helped us start the sip will not return to help us close it. We must do it online. Lot of screens would pop up and will cry asking to not stop the SIP and make a pause. But this pause is also available only for a period of 3 or 6 months and nothing more. On the other hand, the sip stop button is buried somewhere deeply in an unseen location. Stopping of sip is often not an easy task. The full details on stopping a sip is the theme for our next part in this series. ( Read the second part on how to stop sip online here)

Solution

We can keep on adding examples like this. What is the solution? Remember, ‘Buyers Beware’. Before we start an account or start anything new, we need to understand how we can close it at a later date and if it’s easy. We need to get answers to these two questions, what we need to do to close at a later date? And if we really need that new account? Once we get answers to those questions, then need to decide if it’s worth opening it. Secondly, concerned government departments should modify or recommend process changes to these entities for providing better services to the customer. This is a high ask from consumers to government departments controlling these entities.