State bank of india-poor service,procedural hassel. Review on State Bank Of India

Banks: Trust is lost, everything is lost !*

While trust is the currency of banking system the personnel at the helm seems to quite short of this commodity. Its been nearly five months since I have been trying to get myself a check book for my SB account in State bank of India, the last time I requested it was turned down on the fact that I required it for getting myself bike for instalments, I agreed that it was fine and I had to delay my purchase by 2 months after which I got the bike with ready cash, this time I requested to consider issuing me the check book as I required check leaf for opening a demat account in a private bank. The manager was helpful in his suggestion to open it in SBI itself but since I had previously decided to go with the private bank because of the better service (albeit at a higher price) I said him so. After my pass book was scrutinized for transaction details and he expressed his inability to issue the check book as the minimum balance needs to be Rs.1000 for the past 6 months (although at present it was more that Rs.5000).

The minimum balance required in the account, upon issue of check book is Rs.1000 and since I have not obtained check book so far, I could not understand why one should keep the same as minimum balance for six months before check book is issued, is it like I have to prove my credence to the bank in spite of myself being a customer of the bank for past 3 and ½ years and of the fact that my salary check has been credited to this same branch every month. Although I can understand the prudence of denying check book to new account holders, I can barely understand the logic in denying it to every person without the minimum balance for past 6 months. While I had trusted the bank with my money for past three and half years I fail to understand why they cannot do so in spite of fact that I was ready to provide him reference from customer of same branch with excellent track record (unlike mine!!). While the misuse of check book must be taken care of the denial of check book to genuine customer does not help the cause. I feel extremely sorry that such a large and successful bank which has been in the forefront as a people's bank has become insensitive to the needs of the customers.

While this is one part of the story the other issue is regarding the service of the public sector bank (PSB). The service of most of the private banks is exemplary, where you can walk in and finish the transaction in a few minutes and get on with our jobs (very few PSB's do match them). Although I don't have huge experiences about banking and the intricacies of transactions but as a common man I feel that private banks would be capturing a huge customer base in future (some of them from PSBs) with the current status of affairs. The feeling a private bank gives you is "you are the most valued customer and we are to serve you", and with the PSB's it is "I don't want to keep your penny, take it and get lost". The PSB employees seem to think that they are the purpose for the functioning of the banks and not for serving the customers.

This has not been the case with the PSB's long ago when they were the virtual leaders in banking services. There was a time when banking was in its infancies during which time bank representatives would come to our own homes, advising and helping us in opening a bank account (the people were new to banking and were very suspicious of parting with their hard earned money in banks). There were not much of hassles those times when the word of mouth guarantee for address was enough to open an account. But with the march of time and the burgeoning customer base and looming threat to nation about use of terrorist funds, the PSB's of highly people friendly face disappeared, buried under its own weight and concerns. It has grown into the largest PSB, which seems to have forgotten the roots of serving the people.

One plausible reason for this sorry state as far as I could gauge is the understaffing in banks, with heavy workload on the overworked staffs. The other possible reasons are absence of continuous training for staffs, absence of appraisals for the bank branches, lackluster attitude in introducing advancing technology in banking sector with more direct customer friendly interface. Once these are incorporated in to the system as positive feedbacks they will be ready to take on any other bank in the world and beat them hands down. I am using this article to highlight the thoughts of at least few customers of the largest PSB's of India who wants to keep it that way in future.    Yours faithfully

*This is excerpts from the email I sent to The Hindu (sent 4 days back, dont know it will get published or not) (letter to the editor-i sent it out of my helplessness about strict rules regarding issue of cheque book)

I am sharing it with this group here, since my experiences may be similar to people here, so they can advice me or share similar experiences.

Thanks for the comments....Mr.Cheekanth..but  its my personal experience with the private banks that I have told you  and few of my colleagues who had similar experiences...with private and banks like SBI

Let me tell you the problem once faced by my close friend, he has been my colleague who had joined at same place in a job and we got the SBI accounts together, after 2 years he was yet to get his passbook, and even after repeated reminders and trips to the bank it was not resolved, he was really frustrated, only thing is that ATM card was available so it was used for doing any transactions, finally he got better opportunity and left the place of work, so he applied for transfer of account to another district SBI branch, again this time they(bank) sent the account to some north indian branch and he had to run pillar to post to get it back transferred to present place. Finally exhausted and fed up he just withdrew all money and opened a fresh account at the new place. So much for the great service of the bank.

Similarly another of my friend used to put the monthly rent into his house owners account in HDFC bank as cash and I have never seen him spend more than ten min at the bank. However, most of the time I find that I spend nearly half an hour to do the same job at SBI.