Never open bank account with ICICI unless u was to be looted one way or other.
I lost perhaps 20-30K due to their trick in FD form.
If you open online, the FD has option to auto-renew or auto close. Thats good.
IF you fill paper form in bank, 99% u will get screwed and looted by them. This is their trick
The paper form has two check boxes, Auto-Close and Auto-Renew and the third hidden which is deliberately that way. that is . "Neither close nor renew".
So if a customer fills form and leave those unchecked and your FD matures and u didn’t come to bank, bank will neither close nor renew till date u come to bank. When u goto bank, they won;t give ANY interest for gap even if u go after 4 years of maturity. U will get what was 4 years back not EVEN saving 4% rate.
This is their default option of Fixed deposit in paper form. KEep money for FREE and 0% interest to customer till they come to bank personally to close it or renew it. My mother, a senior citizen don’t know much and they shamelessly claim this is their policy.
I am sure lots of people in hurry will skip checking those assuming its like nationalize bank. I argued with Sector-5 Dwarka Delhi staff, here are there non-sense excuses.
1) IF some dispute in fmly and person doesn’t want to show in his account, so we can;t auto-close.
> Will they give cash to person when he comes to bank. It will still show in account.
2) NRI person may want to renew it for different duration if say interest rates were bad earlier and now they want to open for different duration. If we auto-renew they have to come to close and than open which is not possible for them. So we don’t autorenew.
> Myself being NRI, I asked for renew they anyway have to come. Will u renew by phone. Again that intelligent person was silent.
Best argument was we are private 8-8 bank and we need money to run unlike nationalized bank. Thats acceptance of their shitty policy. I agreed and just said why u giving all non-sense reasons just say our policies are not customer friendly like Nationalize banks. A moment customer blinks, we will cut his throat to make money as need to make profits by any manner.
Worst banks and shameless non-sense staff. These days too long queues in these banks as they open too many accounts and no staff except tie wale uneducated agents who can talk in some english but don’t know even ABC of banking. These agents only role is to treat you like king and smile inside after selling a big commission ULIP policy.
Moral of story: Keep 50K Rs in these private banks to access their common services and keep major chunk in nationalize banks like SBI or IDBI. Their services, policies, safety and above all lesser greed will keep u safe. In SBI, even after 2-3 years of maturity, they will renew it and give interest for last 2-3 years.
I started my first job with ICICI bank as acct in 1999 and I have seen how their services have gone to bottom over years.
Krishna
kmsingh AT gmail
PS: In my case, the assistant manager of Sector-5 Dwarka(MR. Sunil Mishra) gave his card after I wanted to know why my FD was renewed in 2007 to 2008 but not from 2008 till 2015. After dropping multiple mails, there was not a single response. Calling on his phone dozen times were not responded. Being outside India, I can’t go personally and they also know it. Again my senior citizen mom FD status is still same and they don’t give any response over phone/email even when I have submitted written request to him 2-3 times before leaving for Korea. Such is this bank service. I have to run 4-5 times to this bank for this small work. Haath jod liye maine but I have lots of ECS etc in my 15+ year account so can’t close it too. They won’t convert to no-frill which is again I feel illegal.
Anyway this advice to youngsters who feel happy with their service and english staff.Sooner or later they will also face some issue like this I am sure.