This sales tactic has drawn flak from some customers when they were charged fees for the credit service that many of them claimed they never signed up for in the first place - and do not want anyway.

It is often only when the bill arrives demanding anything from $55 to $80 in annual fees that people realise the unnecessary cost that comes with an unwanted credit line.

To add to the disgruntlement, some people have even been hit with penalty charges for not paying the fee on time and have endured lengthy tussles with bank pen-pushers to get their names removed from the service.

A credit line lets a person draw on a certain amount of cash at an annual interest rate of 17 to 18 per cent without having to put up collateral.

The practice of giving unsolicited credit lines was slammed yesterday by the Consumers Association of Singapore (Case) as 'questionable' after this came to its notice.

Teacher Chan Xiuling, 28, 'had no idea' she had a credit line until a letter landed from a local bank last week demanding a late penalty because she had not paid the annual fee.

Giving customers unsolicited credit is a relatively new marketing programme.

The standard practice was to extend a credit line only to credit card applicants who clearly stated that they wanted one on their applications.

But over the past two years, some banks changed the format of application forms and now require customers to specifically indicate that they do not want a credit line.

This aggressive bundling of credit card and revolving credit products has become common this year and is the source of Ms Chan's ire.

'I went through an hour of hassle calling up the bank to cancel the credit line and get the charges removed,' she said.

'The customer service officer agreed only after trying to talk me out of it by offering a waiver of the first year's fee if I kept the credit facility.'

Another customer, Mr M. Nasir, an executive in his 30s, said his bank told him to write a letter to cancel his revolving credit facility after his telephone request got nowhere.

A majority of banks - DBS Bank, United Overseas Bank, OCBC Bank, Standard Chartered, Citibank and ABN Amro - have adopted the 'opt-out' approach in giving out credit lines.

The sole exceptions are HSBC and Maybank, which continue to stick to the 'opt in' format.

A Maybank spokesman said: 'All customers are still required to opt in for additional facilities even if they are deemed creditworthy.'

One banker acknowledged that 'a handful of customers' had complained about the automatic approval of credit lines.

But when offered a waiver of the annual fees for a year or even two years, they chose to continue with the facility, she said.

Almost all banks waive their annual fee charges for the first year.

Nonetheless, Case executive director Seah Seng Choon, who described the 'opt-out' practice as 'questionable and unacceptable', said the waiver 'does not make their practice of automatic approval of credit lines more palatable'.

graceng@sph.com.sg