I had to open a StanChart (SC) account about 4 months ago as I joined a company which has a tie-up with them for salary accounts. I am already using the following banks’ accounts:
SBI (10 years)
ICICI Bank (5 Years)
CitiBank (2 Years)
ANd just within 6 months of usage, I have become so frustrated with SC that I have decided to threaten my current employer with 2 options - Let me have a non-SC bank account as a salary account or I put in my papers! It is THAT frustrating!!
I stay in Mumbai, and when other banks are competing neck to neck for opening new branches to serve customers better, this is one bank which is sleeping for agea and has a pathetic network of branches and ATMs. You can still get away with this if your technology backup (i.e. internet banking) is strong; which is not the case with SC. Beware: If you walk in any of their branches, they wil charge you INR 99 as serice fee, for any of the transaction; even as simple as knowing your account balance. Guess they are doing a favor on all of us by providing us with banking services.
To overcome this shortage of ATMs, SC allows the salary account customers to access other banks’ ATM for free; or that was what was told to me. When I accessed an ICICI Bank ATM using SC debit card for the first time for withdrawal, I was charged an additional INR 50. I called up the customer care, and there began another sad show from SC.
Apparently, the phone executive did not know that corporate customers are given this facility of free any-bank ATM access. She kept on asserting that the bank runs no such scheme, and I must have confused the scheme of some other bank with SC. Talk about respecting customers!! I decided not to use this SC card in future at all.
There come the final blow, which made me lose all faith in this bank. I decided to put a standing instruction in my SC account to transfer a specific amount every 2nd day of every month to my ICICI Bank account. Accessed their online banking site, and found that even after entering 2 different passwords at various stages, when it came to money transfer, you have to key in another 6 digit sh*t which they send to your mobile number as an SMS everytime you log in. I waited for 30 minutes after logging in but did not get an SMS. SO called up their phone number (again!). The response? "Sir, there is some technical problem which we are rectifying and the online fund transfer will be available soon."
Its been 3 weeks since and their ’soon’ does not seem to get over! So all my money is actually ’trapped’ inside that account. (Yes, I can use cheques but then why do these so called MNCs have such shitty procedures and service?)
This bank is the worst thing that can ever happen to you in the financial sector. The pain becomes even more unbearable when I consider the excellen service given to me by ICICI, Citi and even SBI over the years. And hence I have decided to ask my employer to allow me using one of these accounts as my salary account.
And jus as a side thought, such a shitty service is given to corporate customers who are supposed to have some privileges over other normal ones. Wonder what must be happening to those non-salary individual accounts!