I have been an unfortunate customer of ABN AMRO bank from 2004. I signed up because my company salary account had to be ABN AMRO bank. Every interaction with the bank on any of my needs has been a complete dis-appointment

a) Applied for car loan. A sales rep visited me and then off the record recommended that I take a car loan from somebody else. He indicated that the ABN car loan product was going to be closed down. This after I had a special visit from ABN relationship manager touting their loan products

b) I applied for ABN AMRO credit card. Inspite of having my salary account with ABN, my credit card application was rejected - after 4 months and atleast 3-4 follow-ups with the relationship manager. The relationship manager thereafter resigned and mentioned to me that the right hand does not know what the left hand does at ABN

c) I finally managed a personal loan from ABN. I had the good opportunity (for me) to pre-pay the loan and close it much ahead of schedule. Every payment (using a local cheque) will take 8-10 days to get credited into the loan account. Sometimes you are not sure if they received the cheque at all

d) My salary account is still with ABN. But, due to some issues with the Corporate account the account to account transfer is not working. So, all employees currently get the salary through a cheque - and it is not surprising that not one of us drop the cheque into the ABN account. All of us prefer to deposit it in our other accounts.

Due to this, I got a communication from ABN that my account status is being downgraded and that I would be charged Rs. 250 per annum for my ATM debit card and to operate my account at the zero balance levels. I wrote 6 emails before their customer service folks understood what the issue was. And, some body out in ABN loves legal language. The email contains 25 lines everytime of legal and so-called customer oriented language....and usually no direct answers to the query asked for.

I finally threatened to close my account and then a relationship manager called me up. He assured me that he will issue me a different ATM card and will reverse the Rs. 250 charges. I agreed. The charges got reversed....the new ATM card never came.....

e) In between there was a month when my office folks ran out of cheques right on salary day. So, we spoke to the ABN folks and with much fanfare they promised us bank to bank transfer to the bank and account of our choice for all the employees. So, we collated the bank routing number, bank branch and account number details of all the employees and provided the transfer advise. This happened on a Friday afternoon. The first credit to a local ABN account happened on Wednesday and the outstation non-ABN banks got the credit on the next Friday.

Obviously they had all the excuses ready and available for this massive goof -up (and that too for about 12 accounts at that point of time).

I would not recommend this bank for anybody even if ABN were willing to pay you money to open an account there. And, should I be worried - I am not....because I dont use this useless bank for any services at this point of time. I maintain Rs. 200 or so in the account and am leaving it active just because it is my so-called Salary account.

How long have you been with this Bank?

Less than 5 years