In my case they took around 2 months. It happened with me when I have applied for a Savings/Salary Account at ICICI Bank with reference from my current employer. I have joined new company in November, 07 and as per the official requirements I have applied for the Savings/Salary Account at ICICI Bank in last week of November. I also have some accounts at SBI & AXIS bank and I have their different stories with me. I have other experience with these banks also which I will tell some time later.
The executives are the face of the banks as they represent their banks and we customers deal with these executives for the banking services. If they are not professional enough the bank will continue to have these kind of reviews.
My bad time started with the arguments with ICICI bank executive with the filling of the application form itself. He was not known to the details to be filled in the form. He asked me just fill up some of the necessary details and hand over the unfilled form to him that he fill later but I refused his advice
and anyhow filled the form consulting with the coolleages and handed the form to the bank executive. I have submitted the photo copy of my rental agreement as the residence proof and copy of licence as the identity proof but he was not convinced with the rental agreement as the residence proof even when the rental agreement was notrized. He asked me to give a residence proof on company letter head. I have asked the admin department to arrange such letter for me leaving the filled application form and documents with the admin department. The bank executive handed the welcome kit(ATM/Debit Card, Cheque Book) to me and promised to collect the completed form very next day. I was not worried as now its all his job to collect the form and submit the same to the respective account opening department in the bank.
I was confident that my account has been opened with the bank as I was able to access my account on ATM center and through Internet Banking also. In the meantime I got my monthly salary cheque on January 1st that I have dropped at one of the ATM center on the same day. After waiting for one week I have visited ICICI bank branch and enquired about the salary cheque. The executive at the counter told me that I my account has not been activated until now and the cheque I have deposited has been credited into the suspense account of the bank. And after activation of my account the amount will be deposited to my account. I have enquired with the admin department of my company and they informed me that the bank executive has not came to collect the form until now even after calling him several times and now he has been transferred to some other city. I asked the admin executive to call another executive to collect the form.
After calling several times another executive came to my office to collect the form and promised me to do the formalities in 3-4 working days. I again feel relax and continue to my work. After 7-8 days I have called him for the application, he informed me that it will take some more day. And then I got a bad news from another exective that my application has been rejected as I have not self attested the address proof given on the company letter head. It makes me that the bank executive does not know the formalities to be done during application.
I again asked him to send their executive to have my signature on the address proof. The exective came to my office and I self attested the address proof and handed over the form to him asking him to take care of the application as its already so many days passed in the process.
And finally comes a happy day for me when yesterday I got a SMS from the bank that my acccout has been activated and the amount has been credited to my account. Its already two months from now when I had applied for opening an account at ICICI bank.
I got frustrated so many times in this period as my salary amount was with the bank and I was in deadly need of money. One salaried person can understand my condition during this time. I can’t explain how I have done the arrangements for the monthly expenses.
Please wish me good luck to have a long and happy relationship with the bank.
Thanks for reading.
Akash Dwivedi