Oct 06, 2008 05:47 PM
4030 Views
Like most of the employed ones, I too had the issue of maintaining a personal savings account. The salary account usually comes free – only as long as your salary is credited to that account. For any reason your salary stops coming into that account, you need to maintain some exorbitant minimum balance. Also, with this ATM card we too empty this account very often than required.
So, I wanted to have an account where:
No minimum balance
Has option to transfer money to other accounts easily
Gives good return on the money in account
Should let me pay my credit card bills from other banks without any additional charge. (I don’t like writing cheque and dropping them at their collecting box at an inconvenient location. If I do it online, I’ve to pay some extra amount)
When this ICICI Branchfree Banking came, it had all that I asked for. (You should go to their site to learn more). I picked it up immediately and after some delay (not in a week or so they mention in the site), I got the account set up.
As this is branch free, there is no ATM, no cheque book, only 2 free telephone calls per month. As long as they give good return and let me make free transfers I don’t mind. (They did have a good clean interface).
To cut the story short: My issue started with adding a Credit Card issued by other bank. Every time I tried adding it, I get a stupid message – not meaning anything and not letting me add the credit card. I complained about this issue to b2.ICICI numerous times and every time they promised to get back in couple of days, but nothing happened. Even though this is a Site related problem, I cannot call them to report as it will get deducted against my 2 free calls per month. One more irresponsibility here – the Bangalore contact number they provide in the website is not valid. But if you write to them stating that you want to talk to someone, definitely someone would call you in a day – that doesn’t guarantee you any action. What we really want is some action and not lip service.
This issue went on from August 17 and after more than a month, they asked me to raise an issue in their portals - ‘Site related problems’ section and only then they can work on my issue. I did that, not once but twice. Both the times the issues were closed without any update to me and the original issue still continues.
My Advice:
Go for b2.ICICI-
If you just want to dump your money in some account and forget it forever.
If you want to have pretty screen with lots of tables.
Don’t opt b2.ICICI-
If you want to operate your money
If you want good customer service (I mean ‘Real Service’. Not the Lip service – “Oh Mr. XYZ, we really understand you” likes)
No one understands what customer wants. If he says that he does understand what customer wants – he is lying.
