STANCHART HOME-SAVER LOAN. The epitome of WORST!. Review on Standard Chartered Bank

I am one of those terribly unfortunate (or call it stupid) people who went in for a home saver loan from Standard Chartered bank, bangalore, in 2005. The only reason for this was the great interest rate - 7.75% floating. They were ok for the first 1.5 years.

Then thy went in a tailspin, in the other direction! My interest rate kept increasing exponentially and reached 14.98% in Jan-Feb 2009. These thugs only increased the rates each time RBI increased its PLR, but never reduced it. Also the increase quantums were much more than other banks. So buy 2009, I had a home loan at the rate of a personal loan! I decided to move out and handover the loan to another bank. I made a part payment of 1.5Lacs of my hard earned money and brought down the principle outstanding from 21Lacs to 19.5Lacs and started the closure procedures - a crappy letter which they say takes 15 WORKING days to issue. Meanwhile it was time to pay another EMI which automatically happened thru the home-saver account as usual(those who have home saver know this).

Then on 19th May, I realized my principle outstanding was being shown as 19.54Lacs. So instead of reducing the principle component after EMI payment, it actually increased!!! What the @#$%. I called up the bank and they say what u save when u deposit your EMI in the account is added to the principle amount. So practically they are cheating people when they say they have a home-saver account. Folks, theres no saving here. Its just virtual. Also the pre-closure charge is not on the outstanding principle, but on the disbursed amount. The charge as of today is 2.76%.

The closure letter expires in 15 DAYS (not working days) and after your have foreclosed, it takes them 15 days to give u back your documents. And thats not all folks - they charge you at Rs 715/- per day for those 15 days. So its like a hotel keeping back your luggage after you have checked out and asking for the room rent. This, they say will be refunded after 15 days from the closure of the loan. U also get a call from a so called retention dept, which tries to keep you with them, try to delay the issue of the closure letter, so that its time for your next EMI, and openly lie about reducing interest rate specifically for you. Whereas when the letter comes to you for reduction, you see it has reduced by 0.5%.

The customer care(less) department mostly will have idiots who will ask you to go to the branch for clarifications because they dont understand the format of the statements. So beware of these thugs and their fraud schemes. Same was the plight of a bunch of other customers who were queued up ahead of me in the bank the day I did my part-payment. They were so much more frustrated than I am. I just want to close this loan and move away to another indian bank. My advice - PL DONT EVER TRUST THIS BANK WITH LOANS ATLEAST! IF EVER U HAVE ANY BUSINESS WITH THEM, TAKE EVERYTHING IN WRITING, GET AN EXPERT TO WORK ON THEIR OFFERED SCHEMES AND ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT.