And it is not good. They have made it harder to use. Here is a preview…
Instead of entering mm tab yy… they now want me to enter yyyymm in this format. I mean no one in India uses the year-month format for entering dates.
I wonder if they do usability testing on any UI changes implemented to their web forms. This one is a sham.
I tried making a payment online using my bank account with ICICI Bank and noticed something awful.
They now have audio messages for you that plays automatically when you try to login and pay online using their platform.
I can see why they decided to take this step. But they could provide me with an option to disable them permanently.
I do not want to alert everyone around me that I am trying to login to my bank account whenever I want to do it!
I was sleeping peacefully after a hectic night when I got this call from some ICICI recovery agent.
The person on the other side talked about some bad loans. I asked her whom she wanted to speak with. She said Parveen.
I responded as politely as possible that she must have dialed the wrong number as this number does not belong to any Parveen.
Shit happened. She accused me of lying. Told me that she had talked to me last week and I am now pretending to be someone else.
I asked her (again, politely) what number she had dialed. Bang on. She had dialed the wrong number. I told her that she had made a mistake. No use. Again, you are lying.
I gave up on politeness. Yelled at the top of my voice. You have got the wrong person. You have dialed the wrong number. Cut the call.
After ten minutes, got a call back. Apologies for the previous call as they had in fact dialed the wrong number.
Result? I have a headache right now.
I had no idea I was a privileged banking customer of ICICI Bank.
Must be the recent checks that I deposited there.
They had forgotten all about me during the time period I was using Standard Chartered dedicatedly.
Another update on Standard Chartered Insanity
I visited their branch today to get some printed statements. I was told that they could only give me statements from June 2010. Anything before that? I would have to file a request and collect it after 3-4 working days.
I was told that they do not keep older records in their local system because it overloads them. They simply do not have access to statements older than one year on their computers.
This felt like I was dealing with a sarkari bank in the 1990s. I mean what kind of a backend operation Standard Chartered India has if they cannot provide access to one year old account statements to their branches even? I mean are they using Microsoft Access for data storage? Seriously, they really need to look into it. Hire a better company to provide them with better technology solutions.
I realize that this might be the tenth post on the same topic. But what CAN I do when the annoyances continue?
I have sent three requests to their online support team to send me printed bank statements. I have clearly mentioned that I realize that they charge (a big amount) for the same. And I give them authorization to deduct the charges from my account.
All the time, they respond back with the same bullcrap. You can access the last six months (wow, I am impressed) statement from the backend. Older statements would require printouts which are paid.
I guess, I would now have to visit their branch to get this done. I bet the branch people would direct me to send a request to their online/telephone customer care division.
Had another annoying experience with their online banking today. I was trying to add a payee to my online banking backend. To make a bank to bank transfer. They sent me an OTP to add the new payee. And even after that, they required me to call their phone support to activate the same. I was required to give more authorization details to get this process done. So basically, they had multiple levels of security in place for this process:
1. I need to know my online banking user ID
2. I need to know my online banking password
3. I need to have access to the mobile phone with number registered with them
4. I need to know my bank account number
5. I need to know my Telephone authentication pin number
6. I need to know the expiry date of my debit card
7. I need to know the password of my debit card
8. I need to know a recent transaction from my bank account
I can only pacify myself by knowing that this is all because of safety reasons and it is for my own good.
Should add here that the bank does not have a toll free number for banking accounts. And it might take you a couple of minutes before you are able to talk to a real human being on the other side.
I am actually switching back to ICICI Bank for my daily banking. I am tired of the mess Standard Chartered has not resolved for years now related to easy access to my banking and credit card statements. It has become a headache to get duplicate copies through their customer support division.
So, they now require me to enter an OTP to access my online bank account.
The OTP is sent on mobile and not email.
I am not getting the OTP on my phone. I assume they still have my old number in records. I do believe that I updated my number.
I called up their phone banking number. The dude says that since email ids are regularly getting hacked, they send OTP to mobile numbers.
I wonder what is more likely… me losing my phone or my email id getting hacked.
And to update my mobile number in their records, I would have to go to their branch.
The problem at my end is that I do not have my debit card. I stopped using it years ago and I have no idea where I have kept it. I can probably locate it, but I seriously do not remember its PIN number.
I guess I would have to visit the branch to get it reset too.
What I hate about this is that they would not accept my verification details through email id. I mean why? I can provide scanned copies of whatever proof they need. But I suppose, photocopies are better in person.
Anyone connects with the new ICICI Bank ad campaign?
ICICI Bank has been running a bunch of cool new television ads for sometime now.
Finally found ICICI Bank on Twitter.
Looks like an authentic account though most responses tell the customer to email them at care@icicibank.com.
Here is what they have to say about my comment.
@broadbandforum Hi, sorry to know how you feel but we are only guiding each query to the right department i.e. customer care.