Jul 16, 2008 11:19 PM
4772 Views
I am an account holder of ICICI Bank - Borivali (W) branch since year 2000. My account is Savings Account which I also a Salary account with zero balance facility.
I have been using Internet banking of ICICI right from the beginning and must rate it very highly.
I also hold ICICI credit card. That credit card is linked to my bank account and hence I can browse both bank and Credit account using same login. That credit card gives me some minor cashback on Petrol Purchases at HP Petrol Pumps. Statements are coming in timely manner (both on paper/e-mail)
The updates of credit card are average in terms of time (normally reflect after few hours) whereas the bank account transactions update in almost REAL TIME! So, when I withdraw say Rs 5000 from an ATM, within next 2 minutes, I get an SMS on my mobile and if I check my internet account, the transaction instantly shows up there.
Online money transfer to any ICICI account is real breeze. Transfer to non ICICI is satisfactory (it takes time due to Reserve Bank regulations but ICICI doesn't consume much time there). They also introduced a transfer from other bank account to ICICI account through ICICI account which is proving useful.
ATM network is pretty good in all major cities (Metros and Tier-2). Only due to heavy customer load, many times ATMs have only Rs 500 notes and no Rs 100 notes (especially seen in Mumbai).
So far I did not face any problems with ATMs as such.
Phone banking is average. Time to reach any Customer Service Executive is very high (at least 15-20 minutes) and it is also not easy to reach them through all the options in the menu. Almost every option leads you to some automated voice response.
Once you do navigate through that, the service on phone has been satisfactory so far.
Now coming to the Achilles’ heel - Customer Service that you get in the actual branch:
Almost all ICICI branches are over crowded with customers (most commonly in Mumbai though in Pune some branches are not so crowded)
They are relatively understaffed.
Most of the staff in branches is not very receptive (I think their working hours and customer volume must be taking a toll on them)
Cash transactions incur heavy charges.
Junior Staff may not understand even basic things about the computerised account system of the bank and for very silly things they get stuck about what to do and need to ask Branch Manager or such senior person. Simplest things like getting a statement from and to a random date rather than proper 1st or last date of month is quite tough (we ourselves can do it better through net banking but still need to take their attestation).
Overall, tendency of ICICI seems to discourage the customer from using a physical branch for banking altogether.
Plenty of Product Sales pushers will bug you (ICICI Lombard, ICICI Prudential etc)
One needs to be extremely careful about the documentation that ICICI gives any customer. It has lot of FINE PRINT that proves that "The Devil is in the Details!"
ICICI does tend to suddenly start new charges or discontinue older benefits. If you are not having the habit of carefully reading the documents, you might be in trouble.
All in all, if you are a computer savvy person who is not too bothered about going to the physical branch and can mostly make do wit online/ATM banking, ICICI actually is a world class bank. Believe me, I have had experiences with Bank of America and their online banking is no match to ICICI Bank.
If you really expect good customer service in branches of ICICI, you need to be a very rich person or else just plain lucky!
I personally avoid phone banking even more than banking at the branch. I would recommend that if you have some way of calling them without getting charged for the call, then do that!
