Feb 12, 2007 05:38 PM
1831 Views
I happened to open an account with ICICI Bank as a salary account in respect to my last employment. And my experience has been a mixed bag of good and bad. I would try to include all of my major experiences:
1) Good thing first - You get your account number, cheque book and Debit card right away when you fillup the account opening form. The card will take a couple of days to activate, but thats reasonable.
2) The account opening form had a declaration under my signature - that was my consent on levy of annual fees for the debit card. As I was told by the bank's representative that this fee is waived off for salary accounts, I struck the line off to ensure that I get what the representative told me and brought this to his knowled. Then I found that my account hadn't been activated even after 3 weeks.
On inquiry I was told that I had to put additional signatures where I had struck the line off and my application was on hold for want of the same. Oh my....this was told to me only when I called them up. Had I not called them to know the status, my account would not have been opened ever. In the first place the representative who came to my office to get the form filled should have told me that I needed to put my signature over there. But I give this to the bank on grounds that this was a lapse on the part of the agent and not an error in the bank's process. But, yes they were supposed to call me immediately when they put my application on hold for whatever reason.
3) The bank refused to give me the quantum optima feature (automatic Fixed Deposit sweep in/out) on my account saying that they had stopped giving this feature while at the same time old customers were still getting the facility. They could never make me understand the rationale behind this differential treatment.
4) The internet banking is a breeze. I would say its the best amongst the banks I have been with (HDFC, HSBC, ICICI, SBoP). The range services available on the net banking is too wide and the site is also well planned.
5) The phone banking has a problem - too much wait time otherwise its OK.
6) If you happen to visit a branch, be ready to wait for anytime between half an hour to one hour.
7) ATMs - Too many out there, but then the OutOfService probability is also higher then other banks. Also there are always long queues there. But it doesn't matter when you have a salary account - you get 18 transactions on other banks' ATMs in a quarter free of charge. The bank also promptly refunded Rs. 7000 to my account that were deducted in excess when I had withdrawn some money from HDFC Bank ATM.
8) Another good thing is that all your account history is always available on internet banking. Most other banks have only past 6 months record available to the account holder and if you want data older than that, you have to shell out money.
9) ICICI Bank puts the payee's name in the narration column for cheques paid from your account in addition to the cheque number in the relevant column. Most other banks put only the cheque number. This makes it easy for you to verify the statement (even if you forgot to fill in the reconcilliation slip in the cheque book) as, in most cases, you will remember whom you paid how much by cheque.
10) Just as a matter of fact, interest on ICICI savings / salary accounts is compounded half yearly while most other private banks compound it quarterly.
Although I have heard from many of my friends about their bad experiences with ICICI bank, I would say that I was lucky enough to have a mixed bag. I wouldn't put any label (good or bad) on this bank as I feel that on an average every bank is equally good or bad when it comes to customer services. No bank would have a policy of poor customer services and it would be only individual experiences that could be very good and very bad also. It also depends how and how much one pursues the case.
