Feb 08, 2014 01:01 PM
16650 Views
I have been having a Privilege salary account with ICICI for the last 4 years. Even when I changed jobs, I maintained the same account. My banking experience with them have been ok, nothing to complaint about.
Last year I planned to buy a bike and ICICI does not provide two wheeler loans. Also I did not want to go for two wheeler loans with other banks because of hassle of repayment and did not want hypothefication in the bike. So decided to go for outright purchase by taking a personal loan.
My loan saga started:
I did not have any prior experience in personal loans, so believed their junk mails saying pre-approved personal loans in 72 hours. (It actually took 1 and a half months).
I filled up the online form and for INR 80000 loan and they quoted 18% interest rate with 2% processing fee. Then they called and verified all the details and sent a mail saying provisionally approved on the same day.
Nothing happened for a month and they kept saying I live in North Bangalore and they have the loan branch only in Bommanahalli and they don`t have anyone to send and collect the documents. After a month of several escalations they sent a guy to collect documents.
Now this guy started asking for documents which were not even mentioned in the online process (12 documents) including my wife`s details! I asked them I hold your account for 4 years and why do you need so much details like a non-customer.
He said if you apply for a loan it’s the same process for everyone and has nothing to do with your account with ICICI. So I gave him all the documents. After a week a lady called and said there is a signature mismatch in your pancard. I informed them that my pan card was taken when I was in college and after that I have changed my signature.
All these years I have been using the same signature for banking as per the form I submitted. The lady said we are from the loan department and we cannot view your signature in our account with us, so you have to visit our branch and sign in front of us.
After over a month`s wait I did not have the patience to reason with them so the next week I traveled from North Bangalore to Bommanhalli. Then they took over a week to disburse the loan after residence verification.
Recently I was discussing this loan saga with a friend and he said HDFC has given him loan with 16% interest rate for loan and since his salary is low compared to me he suggested me to check with other banks on interest rates.
I checked with Kotak Mahindra and they have quoted 13.5%. I was shocked and felt much cheated. Atleast I borrowed a small amount from ICICI and plan to pre-close the loan and salary account with ICICI for good very soon.
