Expensive bank. Review on ICICI Bank

I have been using this card for close to 4yrs now. I have a 3-in-1 account too with ICICI. First to tell you what I like about this bank.

1. Their website is pretty nice and easy to comprehend.

   
   




2. The moment we get net banking access, we also have access to intra bank funds transfers and inter bank funds transfer. Unlike other banks like HDFC, where you have to give one seperate application for Netbanking, one seperate form for Third party funds transfer, etc etc. ICICI does not have all those hassels.

   
   




3. ICICI Direct is pretty straight forward and good for a beginner.

   
   




4. Linking of trading acct and savings account is good to have instant access to funds when needed.

   
   




5. When you call their customer service, you get to know whats the waiting time. Unfortunately, this time is standard I guess as no matter what time of the day I call, I end up waiting for minimum of 12 min.

   
   

Coming to what I DONT like:

1. If you are not registered with Do Not Call Registry, you will be flooded with calls day in and day out.

   
   




2. Customer care is not that great. My personal experience only.

   
   




3. In no branch can you finish your work(be it taking a DD, depositing money, ask for information, etc) and come in 20min.

   
   




4. Very very EXPENSIVE. Once I had to deposit my travellers cheque and asked them for the exchange rate. Their rate was a good Rs. 3/- lower per dollar compared to other banks. When asked for the reason, they say, we include, the commision and other service charges in this amount itself.

   
   




5. In ICICI Direct, they show BSE rate for some scripts and NSE for some scripts. Its pretty random. We need to check the exchange(BSE/NSE) manually only.

   
   




6. The Contract notes in ICICI do not hold a standard format. If you have the habit of using an excel sheet where in, if you cut, copy and paste the contents, automatically, your charts and pivots get populated for portfolio management, it will be a bit of a pain. As ICICI keeps changing the format of the date and time stamp, they change the columns, they add - remove or replace columns as they like. So everytime, we have to keep changing the portfolio tracker accordingly.

   
   




7. Very high interest rates compared to other banks.

   
   




8. Lots of indirect service charges.