I haven’t banked with ICICI yet, but I have tried quite a few banks, and although there are no saints in banking, HDFC has to take the cake when it comes to complete disregard for customers.
I have had problems with HDFC, not once, not twice, but on three different accounts. On my personal account, I was being charged the fee for non-maintenance of AQB(plus service tax etc.) even though I had opened my account with a amount above the AQB and not made a single transaction. The smart people at HDFC charged me for generating a pin for my ATM card(without informing me), and since I get only quarterly statements from HDFC, I only got to know about it after I had been charged the AQB fee. I closed that account and thought my hassles were over.
But as long as you are doing any business with HDFC, you cannot be hassle-free. They keep introducing new charges without informing customers, and when you try talking to them, especially the branch managers(the one at South Extension, New Delhi is especially contemptuous) are incredibly cold and outright condescending.
An account that my mother had opened with my aunt has still not been closed by them, because they keep introducing some problem or the other. At first they say one holder has to come in person. Fine, I get my mother to the branch. Then, they say they can’t give cash on closing the account. That’s fine too, I have a chequebook, so I just make my mother sign and withdraw the cash. Now, when all the cash has been withdrawn, they say the signatures of my aunt(who isn’t there) don’t match. And I am staring at their screen in disbelief, that how is it possible that they aren’t matching. At this, the manager says "the screen is for me and not for you", and "it is upto the bank to decide if the signatures are matching or not". I was absolutely amazed at how rude these guys can be. They are not even government employees, but they are completely acting like them.
As of today, that account is still not closed. I have decided to leave it open with almost zero balance. Let them charge me for non-maintenance of AQB. I won’t pay. They can send their gundas or whoever they want to send.
I hope people learn a lesson from my experience. In my opinion, the people at HDFC are almost like modern-day dacoits.