So this legendary bank IDBI launches this paperless KYC and online account opening process. Don’t be misled thinking the bank is into innovation and ease of banking. The Finance Ministry has asked banks to ensure as much paperless banking and doing away with the need to visit branches. So it is not some great initiative by IDBI but all government banks are now following online KYC process. I’ve had terrible experiences in the past with SBI and Indian Bank and hence looked up on Google for online KYC account opening and found IDBI in the search results. I went ahead with filling up the form.
There starts the ordeal. After filling up pages and pages of details, uploading all the proofs and everything, I had to make multiple attempts to reach out to someone for the video KYC. Eventually I got done with the process and the person just disconnected the call. I got no updates whatsoever about whether the account was opened; nothing of that sort.
A day or two later, I got the message that the KYC was successful and my account was opened. Great, I thought. But no, the nighmare just begins here.
A so called welcome note arrives with no attachment. I wrote to customer care, no answer. I tweet to them, they said "contact customer care at this email address".
Eventually someone responded but with a blank response. I replied back giving them the benefit of doubt that it might have been a mistake. But it appears they were doing it on purpose. Emails sent to support of IDBI get responded with blank answers.
A few days later I got a message that the debit card was dispatched. Well, what do they do? Just mention the door number and the locality and city name. No sub-locality(meaning the third line of address completely left out) and as expected the item gets stuck at the post office. I was lucky to trace the parcel and get in touch with the post office and obtain the consignment.
Now. The bloody debit card can be activated on phone. But you need a customer ID. The letter they sent(with the debit card) has the customer ID masked out. Telephone support says that for security reasons they won’t give you the customer ID on phone and you have to visit the branch to get it. But why then can’t they send me the cheque book yet so I can find out the damn ID from that? "Contact the branch", is the answer.
Their online complaint lodging system never works. It keeps erroring out on you till you give up. Their grievance and escalation email IDs are nothing but farce because none of them will be responded to.
I don’t know the account number, have a debit card that is useless unless I visit the branch that is 20 kms away. Neither their app, nor netbanking, nor the debit card can get activated until I get this ID.
Seriously why do they call it as "account opening from the comfort of your home" if for each and every thing the only thing they know to say is "visit the branch". We all know what is "visiting the branch" for a government bank. They make you stand in a queue for hours only to find some excuse to send you back.
It is no surprise that even the government has given up on this wretched bank and has been struggling for months to find a buyer to get rid of this ridiculous bank.