I opened an account with HDFC bank as the branch happens to be right opposite my house.
Had it not been this one reason, I would have severed relationship with them long ago.
Car loan experience: They took about four months to send me an official letter with the loan amortization and other details. So what if they had already disbursed the loan and I was driving my car around. I had to follow up for weeks before I got those documents from them.
Tele-marketing: I used to get hounded with phone calls offering me this and that just on the basis of me being a ’lucky customer of the bank’. After telling the callers several times that I was not interested, I had to tell the last few callers in no uncertain terms that ’I would sue them if they called me again’. And they took a very long time to come up with a ’Do Not Call’ registry so that I could register.
Credit Card: it did not have anything special, so I decided to cancel it after a few months. The call center asked me to drop a letter to this effect in any ATM which I did. Yet I received bills, first with zero dues then with annual fees and interest on that. I called again, this time they told me that the letter was not enough, I needed to break the card into 4 pieces and drop it in the ATM with the letter which I immediately did. The bills continued and then when I called again, they told me to just ’ignore those bills as they will stop coming eventually’. aaaargggh!!!
Mutual Funds: They are very helpful if you want to buy; for redemptions they never give me the forms, I have to download them myself and then give them to them.
Demat (I have a plain demat account with them, the e-broking thing was costlier than Indiabulls, so I took Indiabulls): I got a call from them yesterday to say that my account has become ’dormant’ on accuont of no transactions for 1 year. I asked them to check their data as there have been transactions on my account. They were not able to explain, they said something like ’it automatically happened’ and this morning I was forced to go to the bank with a letter to reactivate my account and a photo ID with a signed copy of the same.
I was really angry and have clearly asked for reasons for making my account ’dormant’ despite there having been transactions almost every month, but I am yet to hear from anyone of them.
Locker: WHen they inaugurated the branch, I asked for the locker facility. They said we would need to have FDs of at least 4 lakhs with them. I laughed on his face then and there and told him that even if I did have that much money, I would keep it in a place where they giev better interest rates. A few months down the lane, without a single FD with them, they themselves called to offer lockers at a discount :-) I have taken it (naturally)
Online banking: To save money on implementing other innovative security measures, they now force a use to change his password after a fixed interval. That password cannot be a repeat of past 3 passwords, so one has to really rack his brains to conjure up new passwords and even remember them. Clearly a bad measure when other banks are doing different things like HSBC’s electronic device and ICICI’s Card based security logic.