If you were ever stuck up in a situation wherein you have to choose a bank for taking a loan , be it house or car, the first financing option that catches your eye would be ICICI.Their marketing team is doing a marvellous job in terms of catching the attention of the market , by means of advertising blitz, tie-ups and campaigns.Every possible real estate property dealer/auto dealers have tied up with ICICI for loan purposes , forcing most of their customers to take up loan with them.ICICI (even HSBC and STandard Chartered)conducts presentations about their new propostions in our office almost regularly (atleast once a month), and relentlessly hounds each and every employee in our office to take up loan (Many a times I think our HR department earns incentives from ICICI, HSBC , SC).
Even their front office is quite plush and officers, quite young, polite , attentive and do impress you the first time , you walk into their office.They have all the trappings to lure you to bite the bait at the first go.I was quite besotted and charmed by the lady representative (Ok, sorry , she is still quite young to be called as a lady )who initially took up my case for a house loan.Infact she personally drove up my office to complete all the formalities.I never knew India had taken such big strides in personalised banking and customer care .All along these days , my banking was limited to ATM’s or credit card swipings and this expereince of banking right at your footsteps was unique.
The initial promise was they would complete all the loan formalities within 10 working days.And now the reality is , it is nearly 25 days , and I am clueless as to what is the status of my loan.Later I realised that the sweet lady who initially completed the formalities of hooking me to take up the loan was just a front-end representative and she is not incharge of the rest of the loan formalities, and directed me to interact with another lousy bugger of a loan officer.Every time you talk to the loan officer , you feel as though all the formalities would be completed the next day, but I doubt when that next D-day would really arrive.
The first week after my loan appliaction , I was still in a fools paradise to think that the ICICI reps would call me up to update about the status .But there was a stoic silence from the other end .It then took me 2 days to track down the officer who was supposed to handle my case. Then the next 4 days , the concerned officer was on some corporate training out of station , and there was no other backup officer to update the status in his absence.The day he returned to office after his leave , he was busy in clearing all the backlog work and hence could not attend my case.Then I realised after 10 days of my loan appliaction , to my horror that , it was not even processed , as the loan officer was overburdened .
After a lot of headbanging , he scrutinised it and passed it onto the field officers for some technical and legal verification .Even though the house which I was purchasing was from an ICICI approved project , it took 3 days for officers to submit its technical report, by completing its investigation about the house and my personal life .(my salary and finances, my credentials , my background, a couple of references, details of my co-applicant, so on ).2 days in between , was rest days , no feedback as to what was happening.Give them a call, officer is always busy , so have to go office , and remind him.But officer is a very smooth talker, ’’ma kasam, I would finish all the formalities in a day or two’’, would be his pledge. To cut the long story short, now it is in legal verification stage and as per the officer it may take a week for that to be complete and later I need to sign HLD, (housing loan document) and further 2-3 days for the cheque to be ready.This means another 10 working days , that is if they stick to their words.Never had I expected that it would take such a long time and hence committed myself to the land owner that I would complete all the formalities within 10 days of my sale agreement, and my owner is virtually fuming for the delay.
I dont mind ICICI taking a month, but all I need from officers is to tell all the formalities upfront, so that we dont commit to things unnecessarily and for gods sake , officers badly needs to follow up things promptly.If I dont follow up things, they too would never get back to you and its an adventure to get the right officer on phone when you need them.Call up a officer , he would reply that he would call me back with the status in another 10 minutes, but there would be no response until I call him back again.Buying a house was easy, but getting a loan sanctioned from ICICI has become a difficult proposition and that too with every possible documentation being in place and on top of this, this housing project has been approved by ICICI .Virtually makes you feel that you are holding a begging bowl in front of them.
One of my collegue had applied for a loan in HSBC and other one at Standard Chartered , and both of them had their loan sanctioned on time, so beware of ICICI.They have expanded their operations so much in recent times that they have turned into a sort of government organisation with lots of red tapism and unfriendly , callous customer care is just a mere formality .ICICI is just another example of a huge organisation , which is clueless of how to tackle its huge customer base , which is sure to erode if they dont act quickly .It has been one hell of a nightmarish experience with ICICI.