Do you know you pay for customer support

Price of calling your Insurance Company and Bank

Do you know when you call your insurance company or bank you may actually be paying to call them?

What you are not aware of the same?

Well check the contact us page of your bank or insurance company and read the fine print.

In most of the developed economies call center numbers are toll free 1800 numbers. But in India  even the 1800 numbers ( they can actually be 18 or 16 series in India) are also paid numbers.

So every time  you call  your insurance company or the bank you are actually paying for the call. What is the worst part is that these are premium number and you actually pay more than the normal calls. I suspect ( though I do not have a proof), that the telecom company and the Bank/Insurance company are sharing the revenue from the call.

I called my insurance company and tried to find out the details, but they asked me to find out from the telecom company. I asked the lady on the phone to give me the name and contact of the telecom company they use, but she  had no answer for the same.

I think this is a serious matter, if I am suppose to pay for a call to my bank or insurance company, don't you think I should know how much that call is going to cost me?

Are IRDA and TRAI, and RBI listening? or are they busy fighting each other like it happened some time back?

I think this is one area where the consumer is being taken for a ride and some transparency is needed from the financial institutions as well as the telecom companies.

This revenue or cost if any is minuscule for any Bank or Insurance company but they are not being transparent in informing the consumer that some of these numbers that the customer is calling are very expensive to call. I don't see a reason why the amount that will be charged to consumer can not be displayed or announced when the call is connected?

What do you say?