ICICI bank adopts unfair practices and means to fleece the customer. I’ll give two solid examples of the harrowing experience that I underwent at ICICI:
- This happened few years back. ICICI bank had this scheme where the money in saving account over a certain limit was autoconverted to FD (fixed deposit) to earn higher interest rates. I had 25, 000 in my a/c out of which 20, 000 got converted to FD leaving 5000 in saving account. I withdrew 2000 thereby leaving 3000 as balance. Then, ICICI imposed a penalty on my account for non-maintenance of minimum balance (which was 5000) !!.
I asked when didn’t you convert my FD back to saving or take FD amount into consideration while calculating minimum balance. I wrote to all and sundry in ICICI but they didnt’ reverse the penalty amount. They just kept parroting that this is their ’standard’ process!!! I think they changed the process after few months but anyway, I had to pay this penalty.
- My ICICI account was opened as zero-balance account (i.e. salary account) 8 years back. I left the company after one year but ICICI continued it as zero-balance for six years. I was rarely using this account. Then, ICICI started imposing a hefty penatly for non-maintenance of minimum balance . I called them up and then they say that my account is converted from zero-balance account to normal account. But it was done without informing me. I requested them to close it but they refused saying that I must pay this penalty.
Now, this controversy continues and my account has become dormant. But the worst part is that they are still continuing to impose this penalty on my dormant account !!
They are even threatening to take legal action to recover this penalty amount if I don’t pay it or employ ’recovery agents’ (another name for goons). I am going to try my luck with banking ombudsman now.