We decided to buy our own property in Apr 2002. The time when we signed the contract with the developer, Standard Chartered Bank salesman came in. He pursuaded us to take a mortgage loan from his bank (in fact we didn't need to take it in 2002, our scheme was under the defer payment). He said firstly you'd better to secure a loan when you still had job and secondly the interest rate was low (2.5%) at the time. That gave us a feeling that if we signed then, even though outside interest rate increase, our loan would still be 2.5%. On top of that, we could enjoy one time a free conversion and legal subsidy. We insisted that the offer items were to be written in the contract. They refused by saying the contract was fixed and the bank was a prestigious bank, they wouldn't bluff. We agreed and signed.
Until the following year (2003), our disbursement started. But the market interest rate dropped to only 1.5%. So we contacted the bank to do a free conversion, the manager (he was the one that came with the salesman and signed the contract with us, his name was M) refused by giving the reason "this was not in the contract and I can't remember we promised to offer you a free conversion". We managed to contact the salesman R who had already resigned at the time. He confirmed what we said and told us in fact it was his manager M who taught him to say so. He found this job was not suitable for him, therefore resigned.
After a long and sorrowful fight, finally Standard Chartered Bank agreed to convert for us.
Since the beginning of last year, Standard Chartered started to raise up their interest rate with tremendous speed. Almost every 2-3 month we would receive their letters about their interest review. It became worse from last Sept. Even with our write-in, they stopped writing to us with the exception of their interest review letters and the regular statements. We were furious and finally we decided to change to another bank after we found the interest they charged us were deferred from our calculation, and received no explanation from them.
We gave them 3 months notice based on our agreement. After chasing them for sooooooo many times, we received from them that we could do a full redemption by 16 Apr this year in black and white. they also verbally agreed to give us the detail breakdown of interest they charged for the controversial months. We were relieved and thought our nightmare was over.
We engaged our lawyer to deal with them. The lawyer told us the Bank informed her the final redemption date should be in Jun not Apr. Puzzled we called them with the proof, they admitted they had made a mistake, but that caused quite a handsome delay and we had to pay at a very high interest for their mistake rather than they paying themselves.
Last month I went to their branch in Raffles Place to close my account. Meanwhile I again made request to give us the breakdown detail. Even until today, more that 1 month already, I still haven't received anything from them yet. We made the same requests about 10 times since last Sept, all been ignored. That made us feel very fishy, if there's nothing wrong, why not just reply to the customer? It only takes few minutes, isn't it?
To conclude, learn from my lesson, don't do any business with this bank. I roughly calculated we lost almost $10K during these years from the higher interest compared to other banks and the lawyer fee for the transfer. Most important their service is terrible.
