ICICI UPdate 4

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Finally …. Resolved

This mail took real long time….However it finally happened that Standard Charted and ICICI bank could talk and sort the issue. Appreciate the fact that ICICI has accepted their fault and have decided to credit the money to my account.

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Dear Mr Sharma ,

We wish to inform you that we have received the necessary NEFT details from Standard Chartered Bank. Based on the details, it is identified  that the remittance has been returned by us for the reason ” Beneficiary Name differs “. This reason was provided as your account was not activated and there was no name reflecting for the account.

We have initiated to credit of INR xxxx your account for the charges levied by Standard Chartered Bank for the return and will update you once the account is credited.

Sincerely,

xxxxxxx

Manager – Service Quality

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Overall – Alls well that ends well,  in spite of minor hiccups which I think cannot have been ignored the case and issue rests in peace with satisfied customer …

Finally

• Hope ICICI will take due action and put necessary info on the pre activated account kits .. and inform front end staff whats the difference between pre activated kit and actual activation of accounts.
• Finally an email alert would really be helpful when account is activated from back office. ICICI does have excellent email / sms alerts, not too sure why there was no alert this time…

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Updates on ICICI 3

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No resolution yet … Sad and disappointing ….

As requested in my last post and a mail to HiFx I had requested them to connect me with the relevant people in Standard Charted Bank in India. I should really appreciate their prompt responses so far and they did send me the name and contact number of Relevant person in Standard Charted bank India.

Post that I had detailed discussion with Standard Charted representative in India who provided me brief details about the transaction and also validated the fact that funds were returned by ICICI bank.  I had also provided these details to ICICI person to directly get in touch with Standard Charted Bank and get the issue resolved, to this they responded with such a curt one liner –

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Dear Mr Sharma ,

We are also co-ordinating with them will update you on the same.

Sincerely,

xxxxxxxxxx (Name removed)

Manager – Service Quality

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Now, am not sure if this was curt or not. But it did give me such feeling. So far  they were telling me that they are not able to get necessary details from Standard Charted Bank  to track the returned transaction and would need help from HiFx in this regard to close the issue. Now when I have provided them with all the details … they could not even care to acknowledge it with a THANKS!!

Further, its been two working days since I provided ICICI the details of contact person from Standard Charted I haven’t yet heard from ICICI on anything …  With every passing day they are testing my patience and loosing all the good words i had so far for them…..

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Requesting HiFx and Standard Charted Bank

With reference to this issue what I could gather till now is that parties involved in the transaction are –

• HiFx (visible to me and I can interact with)
• ICICI bank (Visible to me and I can interact with)
• Australian Bank of HiFx  (Not too sure which Bank is this)
• Intermediary Bank in India (Transaction cannot complete without them in this case it is Standard Charted Bank in India)

Request to HiFx and Standard Charted Bank

HiFx has asked me to keep them updated about the case as they would be interested to know who is at fault and if Standard Charted is making up the story they would like to ask their Australian Bank to take action against them.

I have again requested them to check if it possible for them to provide me with the details of NEFT transaction that happened in India between Standard Charted and ICICI. Or may be connect me with the right person in Standard Charted with whom I can take up the matter. If anybody from Standard Charted reading this whole case, would really like them to come up and help me out.

Regarding NEFT process,  FAQ on RBI website clarifies in this question that details can be arranged from remitting bank (Standard Charted in this case), however it is not clear if Beneficiary Bank keeps the record of returned transactions or it is there in NEFT system

Q.24. Is there any way a remitting customer can track the remittance transaction?

Ans : The remitting customer can track the remitting transaction through the remitting branch only, as the remitting branch is informed about the status of the remitted transactions.

Further my dear banks can also reach out to RBI help desk to get it resolved, hope ICICI is doing this, no I don’t have the energy left to add another party in the scene …

Q.13. Whom I can contact, in case of non-credit or delay in credit to the beneficiary account?

Ans : Contact your bank / branch. If the issue is not resolved satisfactorily, the Customer Service Department of RBI may be contacted on nefthelpdeskncc@rbi.org.in or write to –

The General Manager,
Reserve Bank of India,
National Clearing Centre
First Floor, Free Press House
Nariman Point
Mumbai – 400 027

Let’s see how long will it take … wish they would not have taken special permission to open account 😦

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Updates on ICICI 2

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Status

Simply put – Issue is not yet resolved.  Alas, mail to CTO could help so far that issue got escalated to Top management faster, else  I would have still been struggling with escalation levels…. and could not very well relate to the comments of others on my

I think its worthwhile to share the issue now

Opening of New Account

When I was travelling to India last month. I had opened NRE savings account around end of October. I am thankful to ICICI that they took special permissions to open the account with Zero Balance. I had promised them to transfer necessary money for minimum balance as soon as the account gets activated. However you can see that my thankfulness ends there!!

While opening account i was given  an account kit and was told that as soon as the account is active I would be able to use the login details provided there and it would normally take 3-5 working days. Here I was to depend on the number of days and no message will come when my account was to be activated.  After around 5-6 days I used the login details, it worked and I was under impression that my account is activated now and should transfer the money as promised. (Now – I cannot transfer money to NRE account from any domestic Indian account, it accepts money only from overseas international accounts so had to remit money from Oz)

Around 10th of November I remitted money to my newly opened account via HiFx (I have always used them for past transactions and has always been satisfied with their service and money has safely gone to my other ICICI accounts smoothly).

OUCH…

However HiFx guys called me up to tell me that money has been returned back to their intermediary bank (in this case Standard Charted Bank in India) as the account details were wrong. Now this happened because my new ICICI account was not yet ACTIVATED. It got activated only on 17th

In all this process I lost some money. HiFx gave me two options of calling the money back to Australia or wait for sometime and then transfer money (less the money I lost) to ICICI account again.

After consulting with ICICI that the account is now ACTIVE they advised me to transfer the money again to India account (this was sensible decision as in the process of calling money back I would have again given the foreign currency conversion charges). So my account got credited with lesser money on around 19th November.

Where’s the confusion

Here is the gist of conversation I had so far with ICICI –

Funny Pre activated Kit

Now ICICI customer care told me that the login kit provided to me was pre activated kit, and I could login to the account using given details very next day however REAL ACTIVATION only happens when they activate the account from Back Office which only happened on 17th of November. ICICI has accepted that if was the fault on their part that my account activation got delayed and was not given correct info by the front line staff (I do have mails from senior customer care members to back this claim)

ICICI can’t trace the transaction that was returned Back

They accept their fault about the delay in account opening and wrong information. However they cannot trace the records of transaction that was returned back because account information was not right. They simply telling me that no transaction happened before 19th Nov

I have provided them with the SWIFT messages provided to me by HiFx stating –

• Message from HiFx Bank to Standard Charted Bank stating ORIGINAL money to be credited to my ICICI Bank account
• Message from Standard Charted Bank to HiFx Australia Bank stating that money was returned back because beneficiary (my ICICI NRE account) account details didn’t match
• Message of last transaction of stating ACTUAL (and less) money credited to my ICICI account

ICICI representative also told me that in India Standard Charted bank transfer money to ICICI using domestic payment transfer process called NEFT in which the goof up happened and NEFT charges were deducted and that ICICI has not deducted anything. Further ICICI is not able to trace the details of NEFT transaction that happened between Standard Charted and ICICI.

ICICI expects me to take this up with HiFx and get them the details of domestic Indian transaction and when I provide me with these details they will be able to close the case. I am not too sure how fair is this expectation of ICICI – When they cannot trace the transaction sitting in India how can HiFx do that.

Clearly ICICI is at fault

Anyways, it doesn’t matter to me who deducted what and why. So far from the facts it is very much clear to me –

1. There are enough proofs to all the transactions that happened between any parties (HiFx, HiFx Australia Bank, Intermediary Bank Standard Charted, ICICI)
2. Fact that ICICI has accepted that they are at fault by not ACTIVATING the account on time and not giving me right information at the time of account opening
3. I have done the transactions in past too and have never been charged anything by any party, this time goof up happened coz account was not activated on time and thus ICICI should reimburse me with the money I have lost.
4. Special approvals and Special status are only while opening accounts… once you are customer … Rules start to come into action

(In any case they are the verge of loosing some faith of one long lasting customer.. if  at all they care.. hope they do)

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Update on ICICI

CTO Act

While i was composing my last post on curious case of sales call, I had also forwarded the mail conversation of problem with NRE account to the CTO of bank Mr Pravir Vohra, whom i had met recently during FST evevt in Sydney.

Thanks to him that service managers are taking action on same and did called me up to discuss the case and are acting on it.

I am wondering…

1. What if I would not have fwded the mail to him? am sure it would have taken longer and I would have been struggling with mails

2. What if CTO would have just ignored it thinking its not his department but that of customer care.

What is your Institution doing for your customers?

I feel gone are the days when IT was purely back office, increasingly IT leaders are realizing this as Mr Dhiren Kulkarni  Joint CIO,  St. George bank stressed during his presentation at FST event that I as a CIO own my customer. I feel Its a big statement, customer is not only the responsibility of customer care rep or front staff or business but also of the IT. No wonder that CIO of CBA took sal cut when their Net banking was down and thus customer satisfaction levels went down.

All said lets see how long will it take at ICICI before issue gets resolved. Anyways, thanks to Mr Pravir for taking action.

Curious case of Sales call …

How’s your experience mate?

Yesterday I randomly asked one of my friend in India about his experience with ICICI bank, and he repeated what i broadly feel about them – it’s been best so far compared to all the banks he banked with’ for customer care he said that its good however their promotional and sales calls are very irritating. Now this was an interesting comment he made about sales calls, which also made me write this post …

New Account and a New Problem…

I recently opened Non Resident External (NRE) account with ICICI bank. Its just been a month and I faced one major problem. For the past  7-10 days I have been interacting with various people from ICICI bank over phone (making international calls) or having tough time explaining issue to different customer care reps over e mails. I will not go deep into the issue, as I still feel that team is making sincere effort to help out,  however am waiting to see  how long will they take…

Interesting….

Yesterday my mom called me up and told me that somebody from ICICI called up, took your Australia number and they might give you a call. I was wondering if they are trying to reach me out for the issue I am facing with NRE account, I also wondered why will they call up my home in India when I have already given them my Australia contact details. This lady calls me up at around late evening Australia time, being busy with another call that time I asked her to give me a call in 10-15 mins. She did called up again after couple of hours and that was late during night at around 11 pm, am sure she was not aware of my time zone. I was like no issues… at least she might be calling to help me out…

Sir, Why are you not using your Trading account?

However to my surprise (or not so surprised now) she was asking me why am I not using my online share trading account for quiet some time now …what the hell!! Now I did informed her about the time and told her that I am not using my trading account for the reason that I am not in country … I thought of giving her my peace of my mind asking her about other issues I am facing with NRE account, but then realized no point telling her all this as she might not be aware of the fact that I hold NRE account with them too. (and that too interestingly when all accounts are opened at same branch!!!). She was simply doing her job and trying to meet her target of making calls …

Sir, read our research reports and gain more …

Then she went on telling and selling me about ICICI stock research reports and asking me to invest in market as Indian stock market is looking bullish and I should read daily morning reports and weekly calls and invest accordingly to get good returns. I did ask her if she is giving me guarantee of those returns or not (I know its not possible, was just checking how she responds and unnecessarily grilling her..) however it was very late at my end so I asked her to send me all that info on mail and I will see what to do with that. Thank God they had my valid mail id !!

ICICI, Any answers??

1. If sales rep can take so much of effort to call my India home, take my International number and give me a sales call, what’s stopping rep from After sales team to give me a call to understand the issue I am facing, rather they are just playing mail mail …
2. If sales rep can make an effort to get my number, they can also make an effort to do some more research to know that this is Australia number and what should be right time to call up … Put some effort to delight customers mate …
3. In terms of Technology, ICICI is really great in India, however Sid with trading account is still different from Sid with NRE account! I would have felt much better if customer rep should have first updated me on the status of issue I am facing with NRE account and then went on asking me about my trading account. How wonderful it would have been !!
4. And please somebody check why are you so promising on phone that reading ICICI research reports and then investing in market would give good returns … Indian market is looking bullish, this is the right time to invest… things like that ..are you going to take guarantee? I don’t think this is good example of selling ….

Finally…

I have been banking with ICICI bank for quiet some time now. Thanks to their sales force they follow you every where. Be it student account while I was in college, salary account with all my employers till date or Online stock trading account and latest entry being newly opened Non Resident External (NRE) savings account. In my relationship so far I have had my share of good and bad experiences. Overall its been a decent experience compared to all the banks I have dealt with so far in India. They are simply ahead of every other bank in terms of services and technology they provide.

However…

The kind of effort you put to sell the product and start the relationship, please also put similar effort to sustain the relationship and show similar level of enthusiasm for AFTER sales effort.

One rep went ahead to take my number from my mom to give me a sales call in Australia at 11 pm in night… am waiting to see how much time and effort will you make to resolve the problem with my NRE account…

How’s your experience with bank so far? Do share if you have some interesting story or experience.