Cancelled the Draconian Overdraft facility

Finally I got my TPIN yesterday..The TPIN without which I cud not cancel my the Draconian Overdraft facility which wud charge 24% if I went into negative balance even for a day.

Feel a sense of relief to have escaped from the clutches of the dirty hands of CITIBANK.

The ready credit facility of Citibank

Citibank offers a ready credit facility to its customers who hold salary accounts with them.I was given this facility though I had not requested for it.

I have had a bad expereiece in anything called ‘Credit’..credit cards especially.Not that I am a big shopping maniac..I was pretty disciplined in the way I used the cards..but the banks were not..Almost every month I would get wrong statements adn I had to spend a lot of time and energy getting them corrected.I was fed up with this and so stopped using credit cards completely.

Hence,with that background,I wanted to cancel the Ready Credit facility provided to me by Citibank.

When I called their Customer care,they first tried to convince me how useful it was.I did not budge.I just wanted to get ti cancelled.I first made an attempt to cancel this facility in April2006.

The lady (Customer care) told me that i had to have a TPIN(another password to remember) if I wanted to cancel this facility.Now this was very ridiculous.I could do all other transactions and ask for anything related to my account without a TPIN,but cud not cancel the Ready credit facility without one.

I just did not want to remember yet another PIN.So even though CITIBANK sent one,I just ignored it and decided that I wud be very careful while using CITIBANK facilities,so that I dont accidently make use of this credit system which is very draconian(24% interest rate).

Accidently,my account went into negative balance(I transferred money twice to my IDBI account over the CITIBANK Net banking).Fortunately,I realised the same day that I was into negative balance and when I checked up with the customer care,I was told that if I did not get into positive balance by 12 midnight,i wud be charged a penalty of 24%.

I was stunned.I somehow got my account into positve balance(courtesy friends who had access to the NET at 10 pm).

I tried to cancel the facility the very same day..but CITIBANK wud just not let me cancel it.

Obviously it seems its a great earner for them.CITIBANK must be making a lot of money from customers who knowingly or otherwise get into negative balance(REady creait facility).

I made another attempt to cancel the facility..but with no luck.

Finally I have decided to close my account with CITIBANK.It just isnt working out.

Out of all the banks that I have banked with I think I have had the worst experience with CITIBANk.

Transfer only to a few cities

When one wants to transfer money from one bank to another,there is an option of selecting a bank only in a select few cities like Bangalore,Hyderabad,Mumbai etc.

Surprisingly cities like Pune are not listed.

This causes a lot of inconvenience to people who work in such Metros,but want to transfer money to banks in smaller cities.

I had learnt that the RBI was working to resolve this issue..but have no update on this.

Just pray that this option is enabled at the earliest.

Posted in ICICI, HDFC, Citibank, IDBI | No Comments »
Minimum account balance

ICICI Fund Transfer

I thought I would start with the good features first.

While transferring funds from one ICICI account to another,when one puts the account number,the site fetches the account holder’s name and shows it against the account number.

Thus u are absolutely sure u r transferring the money to the right person before u actually do so.

This is quite a smart feature provided by ICICI :) I did not see this feature in IDBI.

This is quite simple to implement and banks already have the data necessary to implment this feature.

Dont know why IDBI did not think about it.They should ..

Minimum account balance

Saturday evening when I checked up my ICICI account through an ATM,I was in for a rude shock.

My account had gone into a negative balance.When I called up customer service,they told me that I was penalised for not maintaining a minimum quarterly balance of Rs.5000.

Now what I wanted from ICICI was some kind of a warning email telling me that I was falling short of funds and asking me to take necessary action,before slapping the penalty charge.

ICICI already had my email id and they regularly send me information on promotional products.

When I posed this question to the customer service REP of ICICI,they had no answer and so obviously reversed the penalty.

I also got a call in the evening from ICICI,apoligizing for what they had done and suggested I register for alerts to be sent through email.

Now only because I was prompt enough to look into why my account had gone into negative balance,I managed to save myself Rs.842/- which I think is not a small amount.

I wonder how many customers let this happen to themselves without protesting..

The purpose of this Blog

First the purpose behind this blog :
For anyone who can read this blog,Banking is a another basic need like air,water,food and shelter.
With the internet,Net banking has become the way we deal with banks.

I have been using the Net Banking facility of different banks - ICICI,HDFC,IDBI and Citibank for over a 5 years now.

During this period,I have found several useful features of these banks which make life easy.Some banks do better than the others.

Also,some of the banks have some nasty restrictions(rules,regulations and procedures) which trouble u at times.

Here on this blog,I plan to list the features as well as the flaws that I have come across.Maybe these could be useful to someone,somewhere.

If any official from these banks happens to read this blog,he/she can either feel good about a good feature provided by his/her bank or ponder over the flaws listed here and think of making amedments.

Bottomline-This blog aims at creating a win-win situation for Indian banks as well as their customers so that all of us have a nice and peaceful time.The banks dont give us a headache and thus save a lot of abuses for their customer service.

I welcome all those who would like to particpate in achieving this goal to contribute to this blog.

Sincerely,
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