ABN AMRO might be one of the biggest banks in the world, but its taking its own sweet time in expanding in india. GoK(God only knows), whats stopping them from opening more branches and putting up more ATMs. Certainly not the funds, because they are a full fledged AMC who has floated many mutual funds that allows them to play with the money of indian people.
When I opened an account with them(way back in 2000), ICICI & HDFC were also present in the market, but I chose them because they were providing some extra-ordinary service(cash and DD delivered at home). I thought, they would keep this facility for some months until they expand. I was outta india for close to 3 yrs and when I was back in india, to my surprise, they had same number of branches in NCR. I can’t see any new ATMs either. Funniest thing is what I am going to write now. For almost 5 yrs, I operated the bank account as a salary account with 500 or 600 bucks in it although no salary was coming into the account as I was outta india. Once I was back in india, my salary was getting credited into it.
So I thought, maybe the bank understands its customers’ needs. Recently, I went abroad again for a short duration, and when I came back, I received a letter(dated in January) from the bank stating that as I am not using this account for the salary purpose, it is being converted into a normal Flexi account that would require me to maintain a minimum balance of 10, 000/-. I was given time till 08-Feb to get an authorization letter from my employer to prove that this is actually my salary account. My account got changed into a Flexi account on 27-Jan itself, while the letter sent by bank advised me that I had time till 08-Feb.
Despite this, I duly deposited a letter from my employer in the ATM drop box that was dated 03-FEB-2007. Somehow this letter never reached the concerned department, because when I called bank after few days, this letter wasn’t received. They asked me to visit the nearest bank branch and give an application requesting to maintain my account as salary account, which I did.
I also sent many emails to the bank, using the net banking of ABN AMRO. Basically, I tried all possible communications methods(Net banking, Phone banking, written applications) with this bank, but wasn’t able to get what I requested.
So, I guess, this was my luck that they allowed me to operate the bank account with 500 bucks for 5 yrs.