HDFC Bank. Review on HDFC Bank

I opened this account in December 2000. For a years time it was a salary account after which it was partly converted to a normal account. I will explain the partly part a little later.

For the first year when it was a salary account, I enjoyed all the benefits like zero balance, free debit card and free drafts, etc. I could not have had a complaint. The HDFC Branch and ATM were at a stone throw distance from my house. Its only

after I left the job and the salary stopped getting credited that my woes began.

I got a call one day saying that since the company has stopped crediting the salary, I can no more enjoy the benefits of salary account. So I told them that its completely fine and that they can go ahead and convert it into a normal savings bank account.

They tell me that I have to close this account and open a new account. I said lets see. Its a pain to open a new account. Forget about closing and opening an account. I mean whose got the time and energy to go through this. Anyways neither did I do anything nor did they. Only the next time I ordered a free draft , I saw a charge for the draft. So its now a part salary / part savings account. I never know what they will charge me for and what they wont. So I still have a free debit card and no minimum balance but I have charges for drafts and PO's.

A more recent case with HDFC is with the bill payment service. I had three bills registered with the bill pay. Reliance, MTNL Landline and MTNL Mobile. I used to pay it regularly to hdfc. This facility was free when I registered for it. However around 2 years back I saw a charge in my account. They started charging Rs. 100 for the bill pay facility. I was allright with that as it wasnt that big an amount and I thought that I would get better service. As in the bills would be updated on time

However one of the months my mtnl mobile did not get updated. So I just called up their customer service line. Which again is not 24hrs, so have to call during office hours and be on hold for god knows how long, just imagine my boss's face.

Firstly I had a hard time explaining those dumb customer service guys that I have two mtnl bills and that one got updated and the other didn't. Then they said that they will get it checked. I did this process twice. Nothing happened about it. Next month the same story.

So this time instead of infuriating my boss with long calls, I emailed them. After which I get the answer, that the bill was updated. Again I had to explain them This time I had to type it all that I have two mtnl bills and that one of the bills did not get updated. After that I kept on getting the reply, ''Sir we are investigating the same'' for a week. And then came the final solution. HDFC Bank just deregistered that bill. It was gone. Whewww http://www. Magic.

Again I emailed them panicking as now I will have to go and pay the bills at the exchange, but they kept on investigating for another two weeks. I finally went to the branch one day and told them thank you very much for all the help and deregistered all my bills.

I used to like HDFC Bank before, but these incidences have put serious doubts in my mind about the bank. Infact its biggest rival, ICICI, which I never used to think highly about is giving me much better service. Besides the bill pay there is free.