My first relationship with ICICI bank started when my employer opened up a salary a/c. I’ve been operating this account for more than 6 years now. Now me and my wife both have our salary a/cs with ICICI and I’ve a Gold and a Platinum Credit cards from ICICI. I should say my experience so far with ICICI is very good. Its really easy to bank with ICICI.
Let me narrate a recent experience of mine, with ICICI. I did an online fund transfer to my friends a/c. By mistake the last 2 digits of the a/c were interchanged, so I ended up transfering the amount to a wrong a/c. When I realised the mistake, I called up the customer support over phone, they asked me to visit my base branch to revert the transaction. The customer support officer at the branch(Nungambakkam-chennai), asked me to give a letter requesting to revert the wrong transaction and also explained me that the process will take atleast 15 days, because the bank need to followup with the customer who received the money. They did so as promised and reverted the transaction after getting proper approval from the person within a span of 1 week. Can you imagine this kind of responses from any other nationalized bank?
But if you look at the negative side of ICICI, its bit expensive for a non-salary a/c holders.
Pros:
Internet banking, and the security features for logging in and transacting
Online bill payment(I pay my cell phone bills, credit card dues etc online by scheduling)
ATMs: I dont think any other bank has got so many ATMs
Bank timings(8 To 8),
Online cheque book requests, tracking of the cheque status etc
All communications being sent by courier.
Effortless reach of customer support officer over phone(it takes approximately 15 mins to reach a phone banking officer of HSBC bank for example, with ICICI it takes hardly 2 mins)
Free SMS alerts(As soon as there’s a debit or credit in the a/c there’s an alert in my mobile, with ABN Amro it takes almost 24 hours)
A WORD OF CAUTION
There are 2 incidents I would like to highlight, (happened to my friends, )
- The credit card statement showed a transaction of Rs.250/- to Readers Digest magizine, not done by my friend(the cardholder). when my friend called up ICICI they said its by default they subscribe for all customers of that particular ICICI card, but the customer can cancel it if they donot want by informing ICICI. Moral of this story is, Please monitor your credit card transactions atleast once in a week. This can be done by having a card where you have the facility to see your transactions online(im not talking about the email statements, but the online cc transaction status).
2.One of my friend, took a 2 wheeler loan from ICICI and gave a ECS. Things went on well till the last EMI.When the last EMI was paid, my friend thought that it was the end of it, but ICICI debited the money the next month also. This was noticed by my friend only after 3 months, and they have been debiting the amount till then. When asked, ICICI told him that the customer should give the intimation to the bank about the last EMI and get the loan closed! Strange isnt’ it? Moral of the story again, please monitor your a/cs.
To sum up, ICICI gives excellent service to salary a/c holders. But the customer also should keep vigil about the transactions. The advantage with ICICI is that they provide the facility to the customer to keep proper track of their accounts.