I have had a very cordial relationship with ICICI Bank till now. But a couple of incidents in the last few months have severely damaged my confidence in them, so much so that I am now moving out all my business from them.
And looks like I am not the only aggrieved party- check this out
But coming back to one of the issues under discussion - I have a trading and demat account with ICICI Direct, the documents of which apparently got washed away from under ICICI's care during the famous Mumbai flood. After that began an iterative series of events, which if had been happening in a movie, I would have found distinctly funny. The series would go something like this -
1) ICICI Bank would send me a strongly worded letter, saying I should contact their call center to re-execute all documents, or my account would be frozen
2) I would do that asap and get a request number
3) Nothing would happen for 3 months
4) ICICI Bank would send me a reminder
5) I would call up the call center and they would give me another complaint number, assuring me that someone would remedy the situation soon
6) Nothing would happen again
7) Back to step 1
This funny series of events happened 3 times. Now suddenly I find my account has been frozen. On contacting the call center again, I am back to step 5 above for the last 2 times. The most frustrating part of this is that there is absolutely nothing else I can do.
I have written a complaint to the ICICI COO (email id on their website), and have got the following reply from them:
From: Escalations - Webtrade COO (coo@icicidirect.com)
You may not know this sender. Mark as safe Mark as unsafe
Sent:
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 10:11:30 AM
Dear Mr. Shrivastav,
We have forwarded your concerns to the team concerned to arrange our executive to assist you in submitting the re-execution forms on priority.
We will reply you with the status in three working days.
Further, we apologise for the unpleasant experience and assure you that every effort is being made to ensure that such lapses do not recur.
Sincerely,
COO Team.
Needless to say, the 3 working days are long past, and nothing has come out of it. But what I would really like to know is this - is there really no other option for the small guy? How long can one be forced to take whatever crap these jokers dish out? And is there ANY accountability that ICICI Bank has? I suspect the answer is no.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
I have faced similar harrassment recently for a period of 9 months, though on a different matter - getting my passport re-issued. The crux seems to be that whoever has power tends to abuse it.
Referring to your particular situation, I think its pretty much the same with most banks. As long as you can handle something online, its cool. The moment you have to depend upon call centres, it sucks. But I have always been uncomfortable with ICICI and have done a blanket ban on their financial services ! Try Sharekhan or Kotak Street. The advantage with the former is that their core business in broking, the call centres are helpful and in emergency situations, you can go to a branch which I also found good. Plus their brokerage rates are lower !
Dude there is something called banking ombudsman.
This fellow is like the yamraaj for Banks ... Lodge one with him... It should definitely lubricate ICICI machinery
I have had similar problems...i opened NRI/NRO account with them;
I made two requests 1) Mailing address to be Overseas and 2) Indian address to be taken from a different address proof then on passport.
They screwed up on both and it is only close to 11 months and about 50 emails/phone calls from HK and receiving about 100 minutes of calls from them on my HK mobile on roaming. I am yet to receive an ATM card of NRO account.
Banking is certainly tough for people like me.
Are you in need of a loan? Do you want to pay off your bills? Do you want to be financially stable? All you have to do is to contact us for more information on how to get started and get the loan you desire. This offer is open to all that will be able to repay back in due time. Note-that repayment time frame is negotiable and at interest rate of 3% just email us creditloan11@gmail.com
Post a Comment