- ICICI lures home loan customers promising lower ROI under a reference “Prime Lending Rate”. Once signed up, ICICI starts arbitrarily
increasing ROI/PLR, without any regards to RBI policy rates, market rates, or
ROI offered to it’s own new customers. ROI reduction is not passed to existing customers even if the market
rates fall on Floating Rate schemes.
- ICICI uses different mechanisms for raising and reducing the Interest Rate on home loans, although ‘PLR’ is
supposed to be used as the only benchmark rate and mechanism for all ROI
changes. ICICI’s home loan
customers always pay increasingly
higher rate of interest throughout the tenure of the loan, compared to new customers or market rates from other HFCs/Banks.
- ICICI has multiple PLRs for same product/service, although a single benchmark is permitted as per RBI guidelines. New PLRs are introduce to get new
customers at lower net effective ROIs(by using lower PLR and lower ‘spread’ or
‘margin’), and all the PLRs are increased in tandem over time.
- ICICI promises freebies in advertisements e.g. free
personal and property insurance etc, however once the loan is
availed, no insurance is provided, neither any policy is sent to the customers.
- ICICI charges hefty penalties for loan foreclosure, prepayments etc.
ICICI also
charges heavy fees for re-financing from other banks
if customers opts for the same as other banks charge much lower ROI than
they are paying to ICICI. This is done despite giving in writing(sanction letter
terms) that there will be zero prepayment and foreclosure penalty. No
‘foreclosure statement’ is provided which can allow any customer to
file any complaints anywhere. Foreclosure statements are issued only when the
customer presents a cheque for foreclosure(balance principal+ interest+
foreclosure penalties+’other applicable charges’)
- ICICI forces customers to pay ‘switch fees’ for reduction in ROI to
market levels on floating rate loans, although floating rate loans are supposed
to have reduction in ROI when the RBI policy rates, or markets interest rates
fall. ICICI does not provide any explanation on what the customer is
switching from. ICICI enforces one sided amendments in
loan agreement during such switch requests and forces customers to submit a signed
duty paid agreement with all fields(amounts, ROI etc) kept blank.
While increasing ROI, ICICI does not ask for customer consent though.
- ICICI delays presentation of post-dated EMI cheques with clearing house, and charges penalty on customers for ICICI’s own delay receiving funds, despite
that the customers have submitted all the EMI local PDCs with ICICI in advance, and
that customer accounts have sufficient balance.
- No quarterly/annual account statements are sent to the customers,
although the admin fee is charged in advance by ICICI. ICICI also refuses to
accept post dated cheques during the last year of loan, although no ICICI
document provided to customer says so. Customer has to personally visit the branch every month to
deposit EMIs. This is plain harassment.
- ICICI charges interest even without disbursing the loan. Interest
is charged from loan sanction or agreement date, whereas the actual disbursement may happen much later.
- ICICI refuses to provide any account
balance, foreclosure statements, balance-transfer procedures etc through contact center, and forces customers to visit branch, and charges for account statements
collected at the branch.
- ICICI puts undocumented conditions such as part-prepayment to be
done for change in EMI, arbitrary amount for minimum part-prepayment, puts
limits on number of times part-prepayments can be made during loan tenure or
calendar and financial year, and keeps these changing without customer consent
or informing them.
- Several verbal promises made by agents(e.g. doorstep service,
processing and disbursal on/before a promised date, simple documentation,
single point of contact etc), however, the borrower finds that none of these
promises are honored once the loan is availed.
ICICI forces you to get a co-borrower and sign the loan agreement, even if the sanction letter and property(mortgaged) is in a single name.
Genuine complaints which might make ICICI to admit or correct it’s mistakes are never responded nor addressed. ICICI knows exactly how to make customer give up his/her hard earned money to the Bank.
ICICI does not honor any directives by RBI, and has no respect to people or courts. If you win any award by Banking Ombudsman, the same will be refused to be honored. If you approach consumer courts and win any case, you will still be struggling throughout life to make ICICI pay for it’s deeds. No respect for customers, regulators and law.
Please be extra cautious while borrowing from this bank, or just avoid it
altogether if you can. I have proofs, a direct experience, and spoilt my last 4.5 years fighting against ICICI’s injustice.