ECS mandate form costed me heavily

Personal finance always has something new to teach me.

I am using ECS for like ages now; I mean for last 4 years, I never felt I can go wrong with them. And yet, today I saw one of my newly opened ECS bouncing and heavy service charges being levied. Do I need to say it's lose-lose situation for me? My planned investment is not happening and I am charged for same.

I immediately called my bank, ABN AMRO and the customer representative, Abhishek, there was more then a helping person.

He explained me in detail that why it got bounced, because debiting party, i.e. the HDFC Fund House, was supposed to send an ECS mandate form to my bank. They delayed it on their part. In fact my bank received it later in the day.

Then he also checked for me if other two fund houses, whose SIPs are also supposed to be debited from my account through ECS, has submitted ECS mandate form or not. Well, just for fact Reliance has done this favor to me but not IDFC.

Next he explained that what are the possibility, pros and cons of doing it on my own in case IDFC also delays it. In case IDFC's mandate form reaches late, I have to pay one more penalty. :(

And, without me even asking, he raised a complaint to re-consider the charges levied to me. WOW!

That's called customer care that is very rare.

But now to ECS, please bear in mind that ECS mandate is important in case of ECS-Debit transactions and make sure that beneficiary or you submit the same well in time.

I'll keep you all updated about what happens next. In the mean time, my fingers are crossed. I just hope that IDFC send ECS mandate on time, for my sake please. :(

Update: The money that was taken from my account as service charge for bounced ECS is refunded back to my account.