To close a bank account,  it takes 15 months. That is ICICI!!
 
Close our interesting antisocial moves of ICICI Bank like in ‘Banking for the Booty‘ and ‘ExpressIT-ICICI Credit Card Felony‘, there is another interesting tell-tale which involves the handy work of ICICI bank in having stretching an account closure operation which should be just less than a 45 second work to take more than 15 months (an year and a quarter). And my Inbox.com had to exchange seventy emails to complete the task at least as a reminder to them.
 
It all happened that I had an account for my mom in ICICI Bank Vidyodaya branch (Nungambakkam/T. Nagar). About the third quarter of 2006. We approached the parent branch (Vidyodaya) and gave a signed instruction to transfer to Selayur branch. They promised about a seven day ETA. But till March, when I left for US, nothing moved. After my return, when I wanted to check the status, Vidyodaya branch staff was having a different story to tell. “When was the instruction given?”, “Which date?”, “Can you give another instruction so that we can process it? You also need not date it. We would take care of the loss of previous one.” were the responses from ICICI CustomerCare. Vidoyodaya staff had another strategy to escape from me. If the account holder is called, they would say since I emailed them, they want to talk to me. When talking to me, to escape the spurt of queries that I pose and tight-corner them, they would say they would talk to the account holder.
 
They managed to continue this fun till August 2007. When I again reminded them of the pending request and this time drew the attention of Head Service Quality, it was Phase II of the fun. They were unrelentingly managing the same fun show.  All along the account had been steadily incurring negative balance since we didn’t want to operate the account as long as it was with such poorly managed branch like Vidyodaya.
 
In September, I contacted Velacherry branch. There was one interesting guy called Surya Prakash. He was giving a different story like ‘Account holder should come’. Then within minutes he was confused on the account closure procedures and then he was redirecting to nearest branch and parent branch.
 
I let go this fun for a while at least patiently waiting for whether the branch would do some background work to set things right.
 
Come January and again a steep negative balance instruction came. I just thought better to close off the account. But this time, Vidyodaya had three interesting dadagiri staff (Aparna posing as branch manager, Jayakumar appearing like a drunkard and Nithya, looking as if she was sitting to entertain and mesmerize Jayakumar). I doubt whether Aparna was a branch manager since her percieved attitude problem made me doubt that way.
 
When I took the counter service token and met Nithya, she was really egoistic and she even refused to take up the application form. I really didn’t know what she wanted to whisper over the intercom to Jayakumar (Counter Number 3 yesterday) and he was giggling and then asking me to contact Aparna. Are they trying to fool around the customers? I think if they really wanted to do such activities, they should do with local finance organizations and not with Internationally Recognized Branch like ICICI. The intercom facilities provided by ICICI is for legitimate business purposes to serve ICICI and I don’t think it was a wise gesture for her to misuse towards tormenting a customer.
 
Aparna was again one more distinct identity of how bad a customer relationship can be broken down. She was adamant and was pronouncing the following arrogant sentences:

  1. CustomerCare can reverse but she can not (or will not ?) do. It seems to be her wish.
  2. Go and complain to customercare and she does not seem to care or least bothered to.
  3. She arrogantly told the names of the trio when demanded for.

For (2), I just gave a very calm and collected reply to her: “I don’t just talk to CustomerCare. ICICI Bank as an institution and organization is more dear and near to me. I don’t want to waste time with you anymore. Learn to be loyal to your organization which is feeding you everymonth with wallet-full of wealth”
 
My simple query is ICICI branch is paying them in good only to serve the organizations goals (http://www.icicibank.com/pfsuser/webnews/Code_Commitment_Customers.htm) but given by the arrogant, inconsistent attitude and reply of the staff, we ought to seriously ponder over and place a check on such parasites’ that prey over the organization’s goals.
 
Vidyodaya branch had been the good when it was extension counter of Nungambakkam and when Bharathi, Lavanya etc staff were there. I had the privilege of opening one of the first few accounts as part of Agenda Net Marketing. But the current state of Vidyodaya branch with such poor quality chaps and staff seems to be really challenging eyesore to ICICI branch. 
 
I wrote this incident to headservicequality. Now they took the full query in investigation. Velacherry bank offered to look into the issue trying to address at least the small malady that their staff did. And the account got closed the third week of January.
 
But even two days before closing the account, I got a reply from CustomerCare about paying the negative balance when the branch had waiver clauses builtin if there were problems because of them.
 
Now this incident is again one more strong emphasis that we should not depend on ICICI for any banking relationships.