You are a valued customer only till you have not availed the services of a bank or till the bank is hoping to gain from you in some way or the other.Read the whole thing. While this is said of ICICI Bank, the entire banking system is at fault. What can make them change their ways? A recession?However, most banks do start taking you for granted the moment you become their customer.
For instance, while housing finance companies keep luring prospective customers with new schemes and low interest rates, they refuse to extend the same benefit to their existing customers.
To take an example, following the recent CRR and repo rate hikes, ICICI Bank increased its floating home loan interest rate to 12.25 per cent and the fixed rate to 14.75 per cent.
As a fair practice, the new floating rate of 12.25 per cent (which was exorbitant in any case) should have been applicable to both the new as well as existing customers. But surprisingly, the bank hiked the floating rate up to 14 per cent in the case of their existing customers and that too without making it public!
Related posts:
- Banks and Corporates fight it out over derivatives. Banks will lose either way. From Bloomberg: Jasmin Mehta says that when he told salesmen...
- Chidambaram Asks Banks To Lower Rates The Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, asked banks to reduce interest...
- Lenders Are Selling Their Bad Home Loans It seems that ICICI bank has sold some of its...
- ICICI Commercial Vehicle Loans Downgraded From FT: The rating agency CRISIL has downgraded ICICI Bank's...
- ICICI in more trouble? From Sify, in March 2008: ICICI Bank's investments in credit...
>Is the ET link correct ?
It is pointing to some thing vague in your blog only.
Samarth Modi
08.27.08 at 3:18 PM
>It is the very Indian attitude of “I win – you lose”. Even foreign banks have started suffering from this ailment – possibly because they have Indian managers!
08.27.08 at 4:52 PM
>What is the fun in acquiring customers if they can not be milked? Is not ‘acquired customers’ assets for the bank? return on Assets should be maximised. Is not it? I do not see any injustice in this scenario.
In other sense also no company doles out same amount of hike to new recruits and existing employees. Exisitng ones always lose out.
So, banks are not to be blamed…
08.28.08 at 1:49 PM
>Last point is the most egregious. Banks don’t deposit cheques on time. Then they impose late fees and higher interest rates. Apparently Citibank and HSBC do that. Man, there should be some serious fines imposed on these banks to stop the practice.
08.28.08 at 2:55 PM
>Hi anon,
If that is the case we can always vote with our feet. Close HSBC & CITI a/c s or cards and move to some others. Personally I did not have any problems with either or HDFC or ICICI. But some of my cpolleagues have had some issues with ICICI.
08.29.08 at 3:22 PM
>hi Kaushik,
Closing accounts is an option for sure, but most employers require employees to open account with a specified bank only :-(
09.01.08 at 2:43 PM