Unethical business revenue by banks on account of charging SMS Alert Services

An article titled "Do the charges for SMS services being charged by State Bank of India are ethical?" was written on the blog on 5th April 2014. A copy of the article was mailed to State Bank of India. However, the amount got refunded. Such unethical charging for SMS Alert Services is not only by the SBI but almost all banks with exception of UCO Bank resorting to. While most of the banks are charging Rs. 15/- per qtr., UCO bank is just charging Rs. 0.12 per SMS for transactions.

All the consumers are facing the same problem and even the consumers may not be aware of such money being deducted from their account.  It is understood that the matter was taken up by  Department of Consumer Affairs  with Department of Financial Services of Ministry of Finance. The view points were concurred by the Ministry of Finance.

It is learnt that Ministry of Finance has also directed all the Banks and RBI and IBA to ensure that RBI's directives are implemented immediately and further they are required to comply with action taken report within 30 days. 

The banks have already made huge sums on this account. A rough estimates indicates such unethical revenue to be to the tune of around Rs. 3,000 crores. The banks are expected to discontinue such unethical business practices. The consumers need to be charged on actual usage basis i.e on per transaction basis instead of fixed charges per month.