ICICI, but IDontCIdontCY???

So here I am again, and this time I’m here to take out my frustration on another organization (yes I do seem to enjoy doing this). You get no prizes for guessing who, the title is quite self explanatory. Now normally a guy like me wouldn’t bother an establishment like ICICI, and knowing the sort of potential business that I was likely to offer them, they wouldn’t bother me either. However I’m amongst the working classes now, and considering the unusually large number of phone calls that I receive from financial institutions, concluding that I rank amongst the better half of the extremely unstable job market is just a matter of two ticks of the clock for me. You are very welcome to disagree with me, please let me know if you do, the current economic slowdown is somehow producing a dearth of fools, which makes my job quite difficult, not to mention boring.

So back to doing what I like. A couple of days after the company that was privileged to have me working for them took me onboard. They realized that to retain talent like what I have, they would have to be quite lavish with me, and they would have to give me the good treatment, a good salary. To do so, they would have to open a salary account for me. So they insisted that I bank my precious money with ICICI. And so it was that I started associating myself with the most irksome bank ever. A couple of days after my account was opened, a nice voice called me up, asking whether I would like to have a credit card. It seemed like a nice thing to have, and I’m sure that it is, of course I cannot claim to have had first hand experience with that, so if one of you could narrate the experience to me it would be great. Upon replying in the affirmative to wanting a credit card, the next day I found myself photocopying a few necessary documents, signing them and giving them to some guy from ICICI. Quite speedy service I must say. And for somebody who until then was used to the snails pace of SBI and Canara bank, I felt dizzy. It was a great feeling the next day when again the same nice voiced lady called me up to say that she had received my application, it seemed that we were developing a good rapport.

That was four months ago, by this time even the snails pace of SBI or Canara bank would’ve managed to churn out a credit card for me, nice voice or not. And in case you guys are wondering, the nice voice I found out doesn’t work with ICICI anymore.

It’s not just the four month (and counting) wait that really irritates me, I mean I know that every now and again there are a few unlucky people with whom things take time; but it’s the sequence of events that occurred in the span of the past four months that really causes some sense of anger. So let’s now examine the sequence of events.

• First the call from the nice voice mentioned above confirming that my application was received, which also included confirming each and every detail as given in the photocopied proofs.
• A week after that, another call which again insisted on confirming every single detail.
• Another week and a half later another call, again to confirm all the details mentioned.

Well all this is quite alright, it doesn’t paint ICICI as a very trusting organization, but then again it’s understandable. Each time I got a call, I asked how long it would take for the credit card to arrive, and was quite buoyed by the answer of in the next 15 days. This left me waiting eagerly for the credit card. But for the next month or so I received no correspondence from ICICI. Extremely enraged, I called the ICICI customer care which for more then half the day is unavailable; when it is available however, the voice quality isn’t too great. Now if you think that these are your only troubles, you are hopelessly mistaken. You biggest trouble is yet to be spoken about. The biggest trouble is the extremely complicated Interactive Voice Response itself. It is sooooo moronic, so irritating that it’d drive you up a wall. Try finding out the status of your credit card application once, n you’ll know what I’m talking about. After asking you to first enter your date of birth and then your mobile number, and then your official landline number, and then your home landline number, your shoe size number, and any other such numeric data it can squeeze out of you, it’ll very nicely inform you that one of the zillions of the numbers that it made you enter is wrong. I mean the balls on it, it doesn’t even suggest that the database it stores is not updated or that it isn’t able to match the given data, it just declares your data to be wrong. After a lot of patient jostling around with the IVR, I eventually just called up a local ICICI bank, made a lot of noise, and found out that my credit card application was rejected. Enraged I called up a guy in the credit card department, and demanded to know why. His extremely logical, totally acceptable, completely understandable answer was – sorry sir, sometimes every one in ten applications just gets randomly rejected by the system.

So just like that, for no perceivable reason, one in ten applications gets rejected. I raised hell I tell you, hell. I bet at least a couple of guys would’ve wet their pants, and at least a half a dozen women would’ve gone into hysterics. It gave me quite a high. So within a couple of days, the whole process was set into motion again, confirmation calls started flowing in again, this time apart from the three calls mentioned above, calls started coming to my house, to my office, wanting to confirm my existence. The calls had just stopped coming, and I just about wanted to call up and raise hell again, when ICICI gave me reason to do so. I got a call from another nice voice from ICICI, asking me whether I’d like to have an ICICI credit card. This time I kid you not, the nice voice was on the verge of tears, her boss who I insisted on speaking to was quite shaken himself. So after all the hullabaloo, and four further confirmation calls, just yesterday the guy who gave me the last confirmation call congratulated me for having obtained an ICICI platinum credit card, which would be delivered to me in the next 7 to 10 working days. Now where have I heard that before???

I wrote this article 10 days ago, and I wanted to finish it by describing to you how it feels to finally hold a credit card, but now I’m too tired of waiting. My Kotak mahindra credit card promises to come round the corner (wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t), and I’m changing my salary account from ICICI to Standard Chartered. If my saying this could influence you to change, then change from ICICI to any other bank.

Maybe my vendetta against ICICI is a little too extreme, there are a few nice things as well that ICICI has given me, viz a viz – the satisfaction of taking my frustrations out on some unfortunate person at some god forsaken call center. The epoch of the whole rigmarole is the reaction I get when after receiving a big piece of my mind; some call center agent starts asking a few basic questions, and finds out that I’m just a fresher with only about 4-5 months of work-ex. It’s quite fun I tell you.

So if it is sadistic pleasure and an infinitely long wait for some basic banking accessories that you are looking for, then ICICI is the place for you. If not, avoid it like the plague.