My Father-in-law is 68yrs old. He has a pension loan with EMI about 40% of his pension(<25K) and no other sources of income and assets. He has an active premium credit card with a big Multi national pvt. bank which was given to him based on his previous post retirement stint at a business(not in operation for the past 3yrs) .The credit card is a high end card and when I checked the eligibility it is for people of age between 21-60 and salary of min 1.2Lakhs per month. The card was given to him when he is of 64yrs age and was working at the top layer of the then running business which is not under operation for the past 3yrs. Last august, when he was 67yrs old due to the expiry of the card he was re-issued the same premium new card (3.2 lakh limit) - The business is no longer under operation and he has a pension of <25k and a loan EMI of 40% on it. On this new card he was given credit card loans to the full credit amount of 3 lakh and an additional jumbo loan of 3.3Lakh based on the credit card. All his EMI's come to about 30K. For the last month credit card bill he converted the payment amount to EMI which resulted in a negative balance on the card and that is when me and my husband got to know about all the debt and the total debt on the card now accounts to around 6,50,000. No msg or mail intimation is given regarding the negative balance and also there were no monthly statements of the card provided to mail also. When asked about physical statements by post I was told that that option was opted out. My F-I-L has lost all the money in gambling and the debt came unprepared for us as the amount is also huge with our own home loan to pay. My Question here is how do a bank that big provide a card to a person who doesn't meet any of its eligible terms? Are there no limitations to the loan provided on credit card for people above 60? And no sms/mail intimation was given when the balance went negative. I got monthly statements for the past one year after numerous calls for 2 days and no update on net banking facility yet. And any suggestions on how to negotiate with the bank on closing the card that doesn't move my husband and me into a debt trap.
