Updates as of 17th July, ’14

A lot’s happened since I last posted here. Job switches, travel, treks, books, cycle rides, engagement, accidents, and so on. I’ve been uploading quite a few photographs in my Flickr account and keep my Goodreads profile more or less up-to-date.

It must’ve been an exasperating (disenchanted rather) experience with banks that prompts me to post something about them today.

I’ve held more than two savings accounts across banks and thought this must a good time (IT-R season) to cut down on some of the least recently used bank accounts. I started with YES bank: emailed them a couple of days ago asking for a quick outline of the procedure, they responded within 24 hours in email (rather than calling me up out of the blue — which is a good thing) and all they wanted from me was to fill up a closure request form at any branch and destroy the ATM card and cheques.

Visited the branch at JP Nagar (6th phase?) and saw a small branch with four people in there. There were no queues (small banks and branches are neat aren’t they?) and I was quickly and courteously attended to. They were satisfied with my reason for closure (too many accounts) and didn’t bother me anymore about it. Overall quite good experience. The only negative points were the account closure charges: nearly 112 rupees. And they took a few minutes to print out the closure form which they didn’t have handy. I guess they’re entitled to that for the low operations in their personal banking branches and for offering a fabulous interest rate of at least 6% (depending on the type) in their savings accounts. The remaining balance would be NEFT’ed to my HDFC account whose details were filled along while submitting the closure request.

Next up was ICICI bank. This is an account I’ve been holding since 2011 starting off at the Malad branch in Mumbai which I later transferred to the Koramangala branch a year later. I’ve also held credit cards with them and I kind of still have a soft spot for this bank (their phone customer service is usually excellent, even late at night). I’ve raised a closure request for the credit cards which I haven’t been using for a while now over phone banking and it seems to be progressing at its own pace (about a day old). What surprised me was, I think, the home branch portability of this bank. I don’t recall setting the JP Nagar 6th phase branch as my home branch and it appears that they’ve done this by themselves based on proximity to my residential address at JP Nagar 7th phase. That was pretty cool I thought. Onto the actual branch visit, the customer relations lady seemed a little irritable and was mostly on the phone while I sat there patiently waiting for her attention. Their closure request form had options to en-cash the balance out through NEFT, DD or cash withdrawal from the teller. The relations lady flat out refused to do the NEFT stating no reason. She kept pushing me to use the ATM or take a DD. I didn’t have my latest ATM card with me (old account, don’t know where it is) and I don’t like the idea of running around to banks with a DD in hand. Finally she budged and let me withdraw cash from a manned teller. It’s a little disappointing given the “privileged” banking customer status and all. NEFT would’ve been ideal. Now I have quarter’s supply of cash in my wallet.

HDFC bank: I’m not closing any account right now; to the contrary, I purchased a FOREX card through the netbanking which got delivered to me today. The person (3rd party agent on behalf of HDFC) who delivered the card asked me to activate the card through phone banking. I called up the number listed in the kit and IVR’d my way through to an intermediary who was going to forward me to the correct department. This intermediary, like so many intermediaries in the past at various occasions in my HDFC phone banking experience, had some “phone-only” offer to sell me. It was some kind of “savings plan” whose details I can’t remember or lookup, because, as usual, they wouldn’t send me a PDF brochure or a link to my registered email address when I ask them. They’d offer to send me some product manager to discuss the product and its terms, but all I want is a brochure to read at my own leisure and decide whether I want to pursue this or not. It has happened in the past with other products I was being sold such as insurance.

I’ve been using a DBS account since mid Feb this year and I quite like the interface and OTP format it uses. The debit card has offers relevant to me. A good selling point was its ability to allow me to add an external NEFT beneficiary and transfer money without having to wait. (HDFC and SBI has minimum wait times of 12 hours if I recall correctly). It’s been a good experience so far. I wish it had more options in its netbanking such as the ability to download historical statements in PDF (not just a bare-bones CSV that it currently provides). And perhaps more services such as prepaid cards and so on.

The quest for a good savings bank account with secure but not-irritating netbanking, reasonable service charges (100 rupees to close an account (YES) or drop a cheque at a non-home branch (HDFC)? Silliness) is still open. And I wish more workplaces offered a choice with salary deposits like my current company does (that is how I ended up with DBS – my own experimental choice).