I have an ICICI - Big Bazaar credit card and for the month of June 2008, I had issued a Deutsche bank cheque for a minimum payment of Rs. 100 when the due date was June 28, 2008.
I had issued the cheque on June 20/21 and ICICI has received the cheque on June 24, but did not present the cheque before June 28 2008 i.e. the due date.
I was under the assumption that ICICI has taken it’s minimum due before the actual due date and completely forgot about it until one fine morning in August, I got an SMS that my cheque has been returned due to lack of funds.
I immediately called up Deutsche bank and the excellent customer service team @ Deutsche bank informed me that there has been no cheque from ICICI bank which has been presented for that month.
I then called ICICI and spoke to a woman who informed me that there was a mistake on their end resulting in the cheque not being presented in the month of June and all charges will be reverted and a call back will be given on the evening of August 30 2008 to confirm the reversal of the return charges.
As of yesterday, September 15 2008, the call back never materialised and I myself called ICICI to check on the status of reversal of the charges. At the same time I received my monthly ICICI credit card statement in which I was shocked and surprised that the cheque return charges have not been reversed and the ICICI bank is demanding that I have to pay the dues immediately without any due date being mentioned.
At ICICI, I spoke to a decent and helpful guy named Waseem who informed me that he has had the return charges reversed and an SMS will be sent withing the nxt 24 hours which I am yet to receive and I am not very optimistic about receiving the SMS.
Regarding the promised callback which never came, I was informed that they tried once and apparently my cell phone was busy and they just stopped at that.
In any call center, when a call back is promised to an irate or dis-satisfied customer, the three strike rule is followed where a call back has to be made to the customer on 3 different occassions if the customer is not available on the 1st and 2nd occassions.
If the customer is not available on the 3rd occassion, the the call center agent can close the call log stating that the customer is unavailable.The above scenario displays the fraud - like attitude which ICICI has adopted towards it’s customers.