Am an ex-employee of Standard Chartered Bank, and even then, I would not like to recommend this bank even to my worst enemies. This bank is more bothered about processes and policies than about its customers. It is one of the most process centric banks I have seen, whereas others are becoming more and more customer centric.
I will illustrate my point with my personal experiences. My card was wrongly debited for Rs.700, when I went to dine in an upmarket restaurant in Chennai. I notified phonebanking about the wrong debit, and asked for a copy of the chargeslip signed by me, or to reverse the debit. After numerous follow ups and four months later, I sent a mail from my official mail id to the Head of Service Delivery(I was an employee at that time), about the issue. The issue finally got resolved and my account got credited, after she personally intervened and took up the matter. The entire process took six months.
My account got debited again for Rs.1, 400 by way of wrong debit. This time, thankfully, it took only 2 months for it to get rectified! Imagine if the wrong debit was for a sizeable amount?
I wanted to encash my reward points earned by my Smartfill Debit card, for petrol vouchers worth Rs.1, 500/-. The request placed through phonebanking took two months to be completed. Again, after I had approached the Regional Head for Customer Service.
In all the above cases, I knew who to approach since I was an employee. What if I was not? I’m sure the wrong debits would have remained even today, without being resolved.
Know what is the declared Turn Around Time for StanC to create a fixed deposit by debiting your current/savings account? Two days! Even though we sales guys used to armtwist the Ops team to do it on the same day. But where nationalised banks do this across the counter, is it too much to ask for the same from an MNC bank?
The list goes on and on. I’ve never used another product of SCB other than their SB account, so can’t comment on those. But going by my experiences with the SB account, I don’t want to, either. I’m just waiting for my settlement to come through, so that I can just close my account and snap all ties.