Not so trustworthy. Review on ICICI Bank

For a common middle class customer, ICICI bank is not so a good thing but one has to live with it if he/she doesn't have any other choice. Well, this may be applicable to a lot of private banks in India.

Simple fact:ICICI doesn't want the customer to come to the bank. They ask the customer to do the business in the form of cheques/drop boxes/phone banking/internet banking, etc. Still if the customer goes to the branch for anything, then there are limits and charges for the transactions, etc. I think this applies to most of the private banks.

ATM: To show the number in the ads that they have a lot of ATMs, they have added more machines to the existing cramped ATM centres where there can be only 1(rarely 2) at the most. Often, one can find that the machines don't serve cash or they don't print the statements or totally out of order.

Free account statements: They used to send the free hard copy account statements for each quarter. Still they claim that these are sent(free of course). But, they have stopped sending these to me and my wife. Also, I have heard from others that this service(!?) is very erratic. On asking about this, the customer care person simply hung up the line. I didn't bother to call back as I concluded that the bank has gone down to another level in terms of service.

Email statements and mobile alerts: are sent and this is one good thing about ICICI. Of course, this is very cost effective for them. Sometimes these too are delayed.

Credit card: I haven't encountered much irregularity so far in this regard. It may be because I use the credit card rarely and pay the dues in total all the time. However, there are a few things to note like the credit limit. They gave me just 30% of the amount they promised in their offer(indeed they only offered the card in the first place). Also the cash withdrawal limit got reduced suddenly to nil without any reason.

Customer care(call centre): is very average. First, to get to the executive on the phone call, one has to cross the hurdle of moving through the instant voice response system. This is understandable but at ICICI they have made it harder. The worst part comes next. The wait time to actually talk to the executive. This can last from 1 minute to 10 minutes or even more or a lost connection. In the mean time, one has to listen to the(irritating!?) music. After that one hears a voice that comes as if it is from the bottom of a well. One wonders that when the same call comes from the call centre as a marketing call, it is loud and clear. The call centre people are ill equipped with details. On a number of occasions, they just repeat whatever one already knows about a transaction or a service. So, they are just useless on many occasions. Some of them are really rude that they simply hung up the line as if the connection got lost. And, one of the worst things is to find a regional language line as these exist only in advertisements.

Customer care at branch: One thing that can be observed very clearly here is that the executives(!?) at the branch would address the customer's concern only after looking at the balance of the customer's SB account. A lot of them are really rude. Withdrawing a registration like an ECS facility is really a pain here.

I just had a very bad experience with them in this regard recently as they didn't cancel the ECS facility as requested by me even after 3 months and a couple of personal visits to the branch. This shows how pathetic their service is.

Foreign exchange rates: Well, they claim that the rates are competitive. But the fact is their rates are one of worst one can get in this business.

NEFT: I used to transfer funds from ICICI account to my other account in an other bank. I have done this a few times successfully in the past. After a gap of a few months, I repeated this with a small amount 2 years ago. The problem is that this amount never got credited to my other account even after 2 and half years. ICICI promptly deducted the amount on the day itself. I must have spent at least half of the amount I transferred in enquiring ICICI and other bank and also RBI in this regard. The end result is none. The point is that the response and information given by ICICI for this transaction is just pathetic.

Internet banking:is one good thing about ICICI. It used to be erroneous on a few things like fund transfer, but they have improved their service now.