As an account holder of ICICI Bank, I applied for a home loan from ICICI Bank and soon a young man approached me and got the forms filled in alongwith a cheque for the processing fees. Since my age was 56 he advised me to make one of my sons a co-applicant. Later on when the loan sanction letter came, I was shocked to see that the EMI was very high upto the date of my retirement and then much lower for the rest of the term. Also, they wanted my other son to execute a Personal Guarantee for the repayment. Since these terms were not discussed with me earlier and also since the loan was secured by mortgage of the property, I wanted to discuss with them further.
This is when I found that ICICI Bank do not even want the applicant to know which office of theirs is dealing with the application leave alone the name of the dealing officer. They are so paranoid about getting in contact with the customers. The one and only link I had was with the fellow who approached me and his boss ( a lady)who were working as franchisees for the ICICI Bank. When I tried to tell the lady that I was not told about the terms of the loan when the rep called on me and their business was focussed on collecting application fees only, she took offence and told me rudely that I must remember that I was talking to a lady. I told her that her sex makes no difference to a customer. There was no place where I could go and say that I dont want the loan on these unfavorable terms and please let me have my application money back.
The bank must me making more money through such application processing fees than from the business itself. I know many people who had to forego the processing fee because the terms of the loans are unacceptable, the bank is invisible to the applicant, the franchisees’ employees are only semi-literate and so on.
I then decided to go to HDFC and got the loan solely on my own, with uniform EMI for the term of the loan. There were no hassles and I dealt with one of their own officers who acted as a single window for the purpose. It was so smooth and satisfactory. Will ICICI Bank send their persons for training in HDFC before destroying their reputation completely ?