mumbai recently a mumbai resident approached a newage private sector bank for a credit card to book an online air ticket she already holds a salary account with the bank despite her request for a basic card she was peddled a platinum version shockingly even as the bank executive conceded that her designation did not match platinum card criteria he actually asked her to wrongly fill a more seniorsounding title in the application form she refused to bluff and ticked for a basic card unfortunately her request was rejected a former banker says this extreme and unethical practice could be the result of atrocious sales targets slapped on sales executives and outsourced direct selling agents dsas in the race for business quality does not matter banks are aiming for trouble what is more worrying from a consumers perspective is that such a deal is difficult to prove as no written communication is involved a banking ombudsman official though emphasises that even if there were some mischief on the application form final scrutiny of the applicants documents would have revealed the irregularity this might have landed the applicant in trouble but bankers suppose that the rejection may have to do with some other unspecified reason this though is just conjecture and there lies the crux of the problemthat banks are reluctant to tender the exact cause for rejection the mumbai applicant for instance says she wasnt given any this despite a recent july 2008 rbi circular that reiterates an earlier salvo banks should convey in writing the main reasonreasons which have led to the rejection of the credit card applications in another disturbing instance a dsa tried to palm off a platinum card again of the same newage private sector bank to a mumbai mediaperson i wanted a gold card because it suit my requirements and offered discounts on groceries etcetera but a few days ago i received a vague mail saying my application had been rejected it looked like a computergenerated response the letter did not give out specifics except that the application did not meet the banks internal credit policy based on a combination of financial and related criteria andor statistically determined scores to assess credit eligibility also a combination of verifications credit bureau reports and document verifications this mail has left the consumer confused about the probable rejection reason and worried that the refusal may affect her future credit chances a senior banker who deals in credit cards but does not wish to be identified insists that such a mail is not very vague a bank will not wish to throw open its internal evaluation criteria for credit the reasons for rejection could range from low income not owning a house living in a wrong locality to default on previous loans but if a customer is on the cibil negative credit repayment history list we will clearly communicate cibil or the credit information bureau india collects and disseminates an individuals credit data across financial