If anyone is reading this to find out what KotakSecurities is all about - you are doing a sensible delegation. I did not do any research on KotakSecurities before I went with them. I opened an account with them in May 2006, thinking that Kotak being a reputed house would offer the the best of services in the best price.
I’ve had a very frustrating experience in the last one year. I’ll list them here for your understanding:
[1] Their brokerage is one of the most outrageous in the industry. They charge a whopping 0.59% as brokerage plus your monthly DP charges will have 0.04% of the delivery you do per month - this makes your brokerage 0.65% that you’ll pay through your nose; they will siphon your hard earned money when you least expect it. BUT BEWARE, the SALES FOLKS WON’T TELL YOU THIS WHEN THEY SELL THEIR PRODUCT TO YOU. I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT ICICI IS THE ONLY ENTITY THAT WILL INVOLVE ITSELF IN OUTRAGEOUS ACTS, but NOW THEY HAVE COMPANY - KOTAK.
[2] They don’t have any concept of CUSTOMER SERVICE. Their customer service number "30305757" is a BIG JOKE. I’ll give anyone Rs.1000 if you can call this number and get anybody to pick up the phone. THESE GUYS ARE REAL JOKERS - THEY’LL PROMPTLY CALL YOU ONLY IF YOU OWE THEM ANY MONEY; OTHERWISE, THEY DON’T KNOW YOU AT ALL.
[3] These guys claim that they have the BEST BROKER AWARDS - how can the esteemed panelists give away these awards to such a lousy Broking House? May be the panelists are paid a large amount of money under the table by the Kotak folks or the Kotak folks have managed to cheat the panelists also. If any one of the panelists were a subscriber to Kotak Securities, these guys would have still won the award - "THE WORST BROKER AWARD".
[4] Their local customer service executives (in Chennai) are extremely dumb; I think they do special interviews to pick the dumbest of the dumb from the potential candidates. They cannot even answer basic questions realting to my account and have zero empowerment; first of all, they are dumb and you’ll have to bang your head to make them understand what you want and if you are successful in making them understand what you want, they’ll say "we’ll have to talk to our Bombay office and get back" without exception. AND THEY WILL NEVER GET BACK. YOU SHOULD CONSIDER YOURSELF EXTREMELY FORTUNATE if they get back to you.
[5] I’ve tried talking all their customer service executies up the hierarchy (including Lakshmi Sundaram, Head of Customer Care) and everyone without exception is indiffernet to customer’s concerns. They’ll make BIG promises that they can never keep up - they just are SHAMELESS in making promises and not living upto it.
Good thing about them:
[1] Their website for trading is quite good and I liked it a lot. Their MutualFund platform is good too. These were the only reasons I was sticking with them for this long. But now I have reached my limit - I just cannot tolerate these guys any longer. I am moving out and closing everything I have to do with them.
Good luck investing and Beware!! Do your research before choosing a broking house they can suck the life out of you and drain all your profits without you even knowing about it.
The best broking houses in the industry (as far as I can tell with the data I have now) are HDFC Securities and Angel Broking.
Best regards