This is my first review in mouthshut. The moment I knew that I can write a review about ICICI, I jumped in and started writing my personal experiences. If you can’t go thru the whole thing, in a single nut: DO NOT deal with them. About me, I’m a returned NRI and had to open account with this stupid bank as part of my employer’s corporate payroll plan. I opened a savings bank account for my wife also, thinking that it’ll make our lives easier for all financial transactions. That’s exactly where the problem started!
She initiated a transfer of significantly huge amount (in Indian Rupees) from US. After the promised time of 5 business days, she got an Email saying that the money is credited into her account. we waited patiently for the next 1, 2 days and called the customer support. They simply said, why don’t you wait for another couple of days. Ok, we waited. Then, my wife has gone out of town thinking that I can continue the communication with the customer support (over phone). Of course, there was never a reply for our several Emails about what happened to the funds! So, when ever I called, the only response I got was ’’we can talk about the account only with the account holder’’, even after I’ve entered her ATM card and pin. Then, my wife called and could not answer all the stupid questions the customer service asked her. Will there be anything worse, if she could not prove herself as the original account holder? It took exactly 3 days to open a trouble ticket with ICICI bank. After fighting for 2 weeks (after the promised 5 days), there was an Email response which is pasted below:
> Please note that as a part of our regular security
> monitoring process, all cross border payments are
> run through internal compliance and monitoring
> controls. Any transaction that is highlighted by
> these checks are subjected to further due diligence
> as per our security policy. The delay in the
> processing your remittance is due to such further
> diligence.
>
> We hope, you would appreciate that these are checks
> built in order to protect your interests and make
> online transactions safe and completely secure.
So, can you appreciate it...at least, I could not. That means, ICICI does raise a security flag on transactions and forget about updating the sender/beneficiary about the delay, their own customer service reps and customer managers are also not aware of this scenario. After I got this Email, in a couple of days, I got a phone call asking for all my private details in US (like Social Security, bank account #, etc). Finally, I got the money and I believe, you could understand that it’s our last money transfer with this lousy bank.
Second issue is, I wanted to transfer my account from one branch to the other. I went down to the bank, completed the app form and submitted it. Within a week, I got my new cheque book, with account transferred to some other branch (which is not where I wanted to transfer to). When I called up customer service and talked to a manager with great difficulty, she simply said ’’that is the branch you have written on your app form’’. After several phone calls, when I looked at the scanned copy of my application, I was shocked to realize they themselves have completed one of the leftout column (by mistake) at the end of the app form (with what ever branch name they wanted).
Reg my experience with other banks, I’ve been dealing with other nationalised banks at least for the last 20 yrs or so and could never expect such a negligence. Another experience about money transfer is, better to use SBI’s online money transfer (GLS), which is exactly similar to ICICI’s transfer but very much secure and reliable. If you want to have peace of mind, better stay away from ICICI. I completely agree with the most other reviewers here, other than the bank employees who are writing reviews on this site and giving a 5 star rating for everything. It’s all BS and cannot even rate this bank in the positive range.
Conclusion: Stay away from this bank, for your peace of mind & your money’s safety.