[esteem_lover]

And did they also penalise you for not maintaining minimum balance in your account. Happened to me once, for no fault of mine.

[jp1]

As per TOI report today Standard Chartered fined for 10 lakhs for harassing a Delhi resident. Hope this will make the banks fall in line. This is what Justice Kapoor said

"We, through this order, direct all the banks or financial institutions who provide loans and credit cards, not to resort to methods which are illegal and have no legal back-up and not to use abusive and threatening languages on telephone and not to visit residence of a consumer for recovery of loan and not to use force or musclemen for repossessing vehicles," said Justice Kapoor.

[subbarao]

Originally Posted by subbarao

Hi,

Today morning malleshwaram branch of icici attacked by a mob, & they broken the glasses, branch was closed immidiately, people gathered in front of bank told that, it was counter attack on the bank because yesterday icici car loan recovery people attacked the owner of the 4wheeler in rajagopalanagar area for non payment of installment, they beaten up the owner & his wife, owner complained to the police, & the concerned union, union members gathered today morning in front of branch & attacked.

By this incidence icici may learn the lesson???

Next day in local news paper....... icici are ready to pay compensation amt of 2lakh's towards hospitalisation of 'debtor', but the 'debtor' family demanding 25lakh's if bank fails to pay they are ready to go court..

[mrstyx]

mr.rtech i need serious advice from you on wether to claim my insurance right now or no!
i have opened a new thread asking for advice... pls help....
i guess my query is going to appear only tomorrow as i am a newbie...

[squarecut]

Hurray, I finally managed to rid myself of ICICI. I foreclosed my home loan with ICICI and managed to get the original documents back after 12 days. Good riddance ! Next time I have to renew my vehicle insurance, I will do the same.

Escaping from the clutches of ICICI home loan was quite an ordeal, and I am feeling like I have escaped from bondage.Phew!

In case members here are interested to know how I managed it, I will be pleased to share my experiences, which will be helpful to those who want to get rid of ICICI loans.

[esteem_lover]

What did you pay for pre closure ??

[squarecut]

That is what I found ridiculous. I had taken a loan of Rs 10 lakhs in 2004 at a rate ( supposedly 7.25 % at that time), payable over 15 years, but I found after just over 2 years that they were increasing the rate arbitrarily, every year or so, and with every .5% increase in the rate, they were increasing the tenure by one year. My tenure had already become 20 years, which meant that I would have been paying through my nose even after my retirement. And I would have paid them 21 lakhs more ( I had paid 3 lakhs already).

To cut a long story short, though I had paid about Rs. 3 lakhs in a little over 2 years, my principal had barely reduced by about 60,000/-. ICICI charged prepayment penalty of 2.2 % on the remaining principal ( talk about adding insult to injury). The amount that I had to pay to foreclose the loan was about 9,60,000/-. In other world, I paid almost the same amount, for which I had taken the loan.

One can do a back of the envelope calculation and find that I paid nearly 13 lakhs in a little over two years for a loan of Rs. 10 lakhs, which comes to an interest percentage of about 15%.

that is whu I say that I am happy that I have escaped from their clutches. They are no different from the unauthorised money lenders that still thrive in villages and force the villages to commit suicide on a mass scale. I am happy that I will no longer be their slave. paying 13 lakhs to get rid of a Rs 10 lakh loan is a small price to pay for the peace of mind that I am already feeling.

[WasavaTyres]

god,I need to rush to thier messy loan dept tomorrow morning to find out what's left of my personal loan :( Luckily I don;t bank with them anymore,nor do i use thier card !!

[spadival]

Originally Posted by squarecut

To cut a long story short, though I had paid about Rs. 3 lakhs in a little over 2 years, my principal had barely reduced by about 60,000/-. ICICI charged prepayment penalty of 2.2 % on the remaining principal ( talk about adding insult to injury). The amount that I had to pay to foreclose the loan was about 9,60,000/-. In other world, I paid almost the same amount, for which I had taken the loan.

But thats how EMI works and every bank does it the same way !! I was aware of this before I took the loan..There are many websites out there which give you the principal + interest distribution in EACH and EVERY EMI you make. I did so many projections to see what I'll end up paying if I foreclose at any point in time. The trick is to quietly make a pre-payement (without foreclosing) every year so that principal amount gets reduced by a greater margin every year.

Of course, I dunno how your interest rate went up if its not a variable interest loan.

[squarecut]

Making pre payments without foreclosing works in case of PSU banks, where there is no pre payment penalty. In case of ICICI, you are not sure that the prepayments are actually reflecting in your principal getting reduced, and that too by the correct amount.

PSU banks give you loan on a monthly reducing bais, which means that interest for every month is calculated for the remainder of the principal. In case of ICICI, it is not so. They use the most usurious method called flat rate menthod, which means that the calculate the interest on the entire amount of the loan for entire duration, irrespective of the reduction of the principal ( which takes place too slowly in any case, in the beginning). And then as they increase the interest rate periodically, they do it with retrospective effect.Which means that whatever EMI you paid in the past is not enough for them, and they increase your loan tenure to recover this excess amount. Of course, with every increase in the interest rate, the tenure of your loan keeps on increasing.

Increasing the interest, and with it, increasing the tenure, this is a standard trick that ICIC follows. And since they adopt flat rate method, for every increase in tenure, they make a killing charging you interest for the entire amount of loan.

To explain it with an example, suppose you take a 10 lakh loan, with 10% interest with tenure of 15 years. Then ICICI will calculate your EMI like this: annual interest Rs 1 lakh, and for 15 years, it is 15 lakhs, add to it the loan amount of 10 lakh. That is a total of 25 lakhs. Divide it by 15X12 to get the EMI, and the figure will be 13889/-

For a PSU bank, for the same conditions ( loan of 10 lakhs for 15 years at 10% interest), EMI will be only 10746/-. That is straightaway a difference of 3143 per month, or a difference of 5,65,740 over the tenure.

ICICI will then increase your tenure. Did you say that your loan was at fixed rate? And you will find that you may have signed thinking it was fixed rate, but they have made it floating rate. Even if you are careful in making it fixed rate, you are not safe, they will increase the fixed rate as well. So for increase of every year, you will continue to pay interest on the full amount of loan.

It is a vicious circle, and it may never end in your life time. ICICI home loans have taken off only in 2001 or so, and most home loans are only a few years old. Their effect will begin to get known only in the middle of the next decade, when lakhs of ICIC home owners will find themselves in trouble.

[rkg]

ICICI also follows monthly rests. it is HDFC which was doing annual rets method. but they too changet to monthly rests. PSU banks esp SBI group offers daily rests. that is principle gets reduced on daily basis. this is useful if one is making prepayment( cam make it anytime) where as one has to do prepayment for monthly rests only the day before or just around the date of EMI payment to get full advantage. ICICI does not charge anything for prepayment as of now.
if one has EMI date as 1 st of a month and if does prepayment on 2nd then the principle gets reduced form next month 1st. if on emake it on 1st itslef it is effective form 1st of that month itself.
it is a better option to make prepayment than foreclosing. the penalty for a 10 lakh loan works otu as 22000/ if one makes the same as prepaymet the number of emei will come down by approximately 10. in my case i made a prepayment of 50K. the no of emei came down by 20 ( 20*13200= 2.6 lakhs) at the present rate 9.75% for home loans of onemakes prepayment his returns( notional) will be 10% in the first year, 11.2% in 2nd year,12.4,13.5,15,16.5,18.3,20.1,22.2,24.4 for 3,4,5,6,7,8,9 and 10th year respectively.

[spadival]

Yes. What rkg said is true. Also, in my case, they didnt increase the tenure beyond X years when interest rate increased.. They increased the EMI. They only decreased the tenure when the interest rates decreased, which is fair enough.

Also, I clearly asked for floating rate and thats what I got. Besides, I got the loan disbursed while I was out of the country and I even got the co-applicant changed (which meant loads of document changes) while being out of the country and communicated with the ICICI relationship manager only thru email.. I dont think I can expect such service from any PSU Bank!!

[manaa45]

i wanted to open an current account. even though i went with all the documents, they did not show any interest in opening because i was short of one license which i will get only after a month. may be there might be rules in place but i wasnt told of it when i had gone there thrice earlier.

i m starting to get highly disillusioned by ICICI

Mansi

[anonymous]

I also like to add my experience with ICICI Car Loan
I took car loan for 4 years, starting from May 2004 and had been paying EMI regularly till Dec. 2006. In Dec, I received a call from ICICI and they were offering Car Over Draft faclity. What I was told that the car would be evaluated and a current a/c would be opened as per the result of this evaluation. My left loan amount would be paid and I will have to deposit this amount in the current a/c within 1 year and there would be no interest on the amount, which was going to be paid for the car loan. In case if I withdraw money from this current account, I would be charged @14% per month. Fair enough. I checked with them 2/3 times to make sure that there would no interest on the amount, paid against my car loan and I got positive anwers all time that "NO".
I did consult it with my friends but since they never used this facility so they couldn't help but they said that there has to be some catch in it.........Finally I decided to go for it.........I signed all the documents and submitted them. After 15 days......I got rest of signed cheques back.........After 5 more days, I received the complete details of my new current a/c. So far so good.
Now in Jan, I came to know the "Catch" in this deal.......The amount, which was paid against my car loan was NOT interest free.........So basically since I had paid most of the interest in my intial EMIs, ICICI gave this new facility to make more interest out of it. When I called their so called customer service, I was told that yes, there is an interest on it and when I said that this is not what I was told before, when I was offered this facility, they said that its a mistake but there is nothing can be done now.....................
Now the only way, I can see to solve it, is to repay the complete amount and close this account.
By doing this ICICI has lost its one customer........I also had very bad experience with HDFC, when they seized my saving account and took out the complete money, which was pending on my credit card and never informed me before or after...............But thats another story. So big no to HDFC as well.
I feel that all the banks are doing the samething. Its only when you come across these kind of situation, you face the real world, otherwise everything is looking pretty cool.
The main problem I feel that most of these kind of deals like credit card, home loan, car loan, personal loan are offered on phone, we do not know who are these people and later on, we can't find them, since we do not know their location or address. Next time, when I will be going for any loan, I rather be going to any branch and talk to them personally, so that later on, in case of any problem, I can directly get hold of that person........

[mobike008]

Rlather, sorry to know your experience. Welcome to the ICICI blasting club, we all had some kind of terrible experience with them.

Your post potrays ICICI as VULTURES and bielieve you me, they are much more than that