[manduvindupondu]

Hi All,
I am on lookout for a Private or Foreign Bank Savings account in India.
My requirement is
a) Low Minimum balance
b) No surprise charges, unwanted upgrades, no hidden charges
c) Good responsive customer service in case of a potential problem
d) Good online banking - ability to Open and close FDs online (prematurely too without penalty)
e) Rupay Debit Card (Preferable but not mandatory)

Please suggest.

[neutralgrey]

IDFC is a good option. I have only good things to say about them so far.
I had opened an account with them for online control over FDs. Also, there is no minimum balance required.

[manduvindupondu]

Thanks neutralgrey. Hope IDFC does NOT become like IDBI bank of 2015 and remains like IDBI Bank of 2013 (When MOST of the good features were of reasonable cost)
When I opened IDBI bank Savings account of 2011, they gave a slew of features free of cost , to the point where I always felt it was unsustainable.
My fears came true and now IDBI bank is one of the costliest Public sector banks to bank with.
I will rethink on continuing IDBI Bank and may close it.
My considerations set now are IDFC bank, DBS Digi bank Savings account, Karur Vysya bank, IndusInd bank , Yes Bank, Kotak Mahindra.
The last 3 are in fact Nifty 50 companies!

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by manduvindupondu

My considerations set now are IDFC bank, DBS Digi bank Savings account, Karur Vysya bank, IndusInd bank , Yes Bank, Kotak Mahindra.
The last 3 are in fact Nifty 50 companies!

I had a bad experience with Kotak Mahindra. My mother had an account with them and their paperwork was dodgy. The FD maturity amounts never matched and on the same day I got four different printouts with different calculations as to where the missing money went Finally decided to close the account and that started another nightmare and escalations that lasted few months.

Every-time I visited any branch, their systems were either slow or not working and I have seen them sending people to other branches because they couldn't take the print out of the required forms.

[vrprabhu]

Originally Posted by abs182

As for the Mahila Bank I dont see much future. It was a demented idea in the first place. Last I heard they are simple depositing all the deposits they take in into GOI bonds. I won;t be surprised if the bank eventually gets folded into one of the GOI PSU banks. Its of course a GOI backed bank but I am not sure about its future as a stand alone bank.

Wow! Looks like you read the future correctly. BMB (Bharatiya Mahila Bank) is being merged with SBI - that's the news given SBI CMD a couple of weeks ago. Don't know when it will happen.

Originally Posted by manduvindupondu

I am on lookout for a Private or Foreign Bank Savings account in India.
My requirement is
a) Low Minimum balance
b) No surprise charges, unwanted upgrades, no hidden charges
c) Good responsive customer service in case of a potential problem
d) Good online banking - ability to Open and close FDs online (prematurely too without penalty)
e) Rupay Debit Card (Preferable but not mandatory)

Please suggest.

Among Private Sector Banks, as suggested by someone else earlier, Karur Vysya Bank Ltd. is offering one of the best technology oriented services. Don't know about their charges. Federal Bank Ltd. is also good.

Don't think that any Foreign Bank will permit a 'Low Minimum Balance' facility - they will extract their pound of flesh one way or other!

Any reason why you are not keen on Public Sector Banks? Some of them have very good banking services - both net banking and mobile banking at par with the best in the industry, and provide decent service (you will get more personalised service if you are able to build some rapport with the branch staff!)

BTW, make sure you get a EMV (chip based) ATM cum DEBIT card - more secure as they are difficult to skim / clone.

[pramodkumar]

I am not sure if there is an already existing thread on this topic, if yes mods kindly feel free to merge it to the existing thread.

I have a personal Loan with Axis bank and I have been regularly paying my EMIs for almost 6 Months now, It goes via an ECS on the 5th of every month, this month 5th was a Sunday and naturally I assumed it would get cleared on Monday or Tuesday. It goes from my salary account with SBT(state bank of Travancore) and I came to know that AXIS bank was unable to get the ECS cleared due to some technical glitch at SBT which had affected 1000s of customers across india, this was on the 5th is what I came to know. Now the collection agent called me and asked me to maintain the funds in the account till the 15th since they will retry the clearing once again. It didn't get cleared on the 15th and now I got a call saying oi have to pay the bouncing charges along with doing a manual payment. I don't mind taking the effort to go to the axis bank 10KMs away from home on a Saturday however I feel not obligated to pay the bounce charges since I am not at fault.

I spoke to the manager at SBT and she asked me to send them an email, which I don't feel would bring any results, I am certain that this would go into my CIBIL record, but I feel really sad as to why a consumer suffer for some fault which was not at all his.

I want to know the obligation SBT has towards such incidence cause the failure at their end is causing me money and there are mounting penalties and penalties on penalties if we don't pay the bouncing charges. I don't feel axis bank is at fault here however since ECS doesn't incur any handling charges(like a cheque) I feel their fine of 550 is too high.

What are my options?

PS I have already sent a mail to axis bank asking them to provide me in writing the charges incurred, which I am planning to forward to SBT for further action.

Pramod

[raghu.t.k]

Originally Posted by pramodkumar

......
I spoke to the manager at SBT and she asked me to send them an email, which I don't feel would bring any results, I am certain that this would go into my CIBIL record, but I feel really sad as to why a consumer suffer for some fault which was not at all his.

I want to know the obligation SBT has towards such incidence cause the failure at their end is causing me money and there are mounting penalties and penalties on penalties if we don't pay the bouncing charges. I don't feel axis bank is at fault here however since ECS doesn't incur any handling charges(like a cheque) I feel their fine of 550 is too high.

What are my options?

PS I have already sent a mail to axis bank asking them to provide me in writing the charges incurred, which I am planning to forward to SBT for further action.

Pramod

You could contest the charges stating that the funds were available in the account, failing which, complain to the branch manager of SBT to take on the charges. The same can then be forwarded to CIBIL.

[swiftnfurious]

I think you can also try different hierarchy and then reach out to banking ombudsman if this is not resolved. Plus, if possible, please maintain a month's EMI additional always. This way, even if the current month's standing instruction delays, you still wouldn't have to worry and will have a 30 days buffer to sort issues out.

[Pequod]

If you really pursue the matter with SBT, they shall have no go but to compensate you because you are not at fault in this case. How long, and how far you will have to go down that road, really depends on the people you deal with at the branch.

The implication on your CIBIL report would be negligible for such a minor transgression, provided all your other dues are being paid regularly.

[pramodkumar]

Originally Posted by raghu.t.k

You could contest the charges stating that the funds were available in the account, failing which, complain to the branch manager of SBT to take on the charges. The same can then be forwarded to CIBIL.

Do you know the procedure, in order to check don't I have to pay for getting the report?

Originally Posted by swiftnfurious

I think you can also try different hierarchy and then reach out to banking ombudsman if this is not resolved. Plus, if possible, please maintain a month's EMI additional always. This way, even if the current month's standing instruction delays, you still wouldn't have to worry and will have a 30 days buffer to sort issues out.

I too felt the ombudsman as the right place to reachout to, but was sceptical about the time taken for resolution.

Originally Posted by Pequod

If you really pursue the matter with SBT, they shall have no go but to compensate you because you are not at fault in this case. How long, and how far you will have to go down that road, really depends on the people you deal with at the branch.

The implication on your CIBIL report would be negligible for such a minor transgression, provided all your other dues are being paid regularly.

I am little irked at how casually they just dismissed the grievances. I am actually prepared to take it up, that is the reason I was specific about mentioning the name of the defaulting bank.

Pramod

[jinojohnt]

Reserve bank of India has an online mechanism for complaint to Banking Ombudsman (of course after bank fails to address your written complaint to your satisfaction, or has not responded even after 30 days of your complaint):
https://secweb.rbi.org.in/BO/precompltindex.htm
(If you select the radio button 'No', you would be able to upload the complaint, which will be forwarded to the bank. Also make sure to file a separate written complaint with the bank and ask for acknowledgement).

[NPV]

Originally Posted by pramodkumar

I am little irked at how casually they just dismissed the grievances. I am actually prepared to take it up, that is the reason I was specific about mentioning the name of the defaulting bank.

I don't think this will go up to CIBIL as yet and affect your credit score.

I'm saying this from my woeful experience with Axis where I'd issued post-dated cheques for EMI payments and they were trying to execute a non-existent ECS each month followed by presenting the cheque. In the process, they had charged my account with ECS failure charges (like a cheque bounce!) while also getting their due EMI using my post-dated cheque each month. This happened for 7 months in a row

After a lot of phone calls and emails (writing to "nodal officer" works best), they resolved the issue by reversing all the charges. Recently, I had to avail a car loan and the CIBIL report did not have any negative score due to the Axis fiasco.

After they ran out of a years worth of post-dated cheques, there was an RBI mandate on using only ECS for EMI payments and at that time the Axis folks suggested opening a Savings account with them for the purpose of EMI. I hated this idea but that is what has worked well. So you may want to consider that as an option going forward, just make sure that at any point you have at least 2 EMIs worth of balance in that account and you can set up a Standing Instruction from SBT to transfer funds each month!

Try banking ombudsman if Axis nodal officer is of no help. Also consider complaining using Pgportal if all else fails.

[pramodkumar]

Originally Posted by NPV

I don't think this will go up to CIBIL as yet and affect your credit score..

I too feel its too early to affect the score, however I am planning to pay the EMI alone manually, or should I pay the bouncing charges as well? The bank website says bouncing charges is 350 for ECS however I was told by the collection guy its about 500 odd. If I do not pay this charge I might end up in the CIBIL

Originally Posted by NPV

After a lot of phone calls and emails (writing to "nodal officer" works best), they resolved the issue by reversing all the charges. Recently, I had to avail a car loan and the CIBIL report did not have any negative score due to the Axis fiasco.

Usually these things do come up but the take a deviation. I usually have more than 3 EMIs in my account because this is my salary account and I was even thinking of shifting my loan account to axis bank, I already have an account and my wife's EMI for the home loan actually goes out of my axis bank account, somehow even in their app my loan account is not getting listed. I strongly feel now that I need to move my account to axis but I was planning to close this loan in October this year hence I decided to continue with SBT, just to avoid the hassle. My wife's office accounts are in SBT as well, they had many people affected due to this outage, I am sure some heads at SBT will roll.

Originally Posted by NPV

Try banking ombudsman if Axis nodal officer is of no help. Also consider complaining using Pgportal if all else fails.

If nothing works out that's my last option, buggars have my tax saving FDs for 3 years with them. I am feeling now how vulnerable we actually are.

Pramod

[Turbanator]

I too feel its too early to affect the score, however I am planning to pay the EMI alone manually, or should I pay the bouncing charges as well? The bank website says bouncing charges is 350 for ECS however I was told by the collection guy its about 500 odd. If I do not pay this charge I might end up in the CIBIL

Better pay them extra as per demand, even higher , who knows kind of service and other taxes are added on these charges besides if I am not wrong they will charge you Interest on this EMI for the number of days it was delayed . You can always communicate and get a reversal.

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by pramodkumar

I too feel its too early to affect the score, however I am planning to pay the EMI alone manually, or should I pay the bouncing charges as well? The bank website says bouncing charges is 350 for ECS however I was told by the collection guy its about 500 odd. If I do not pay this charge I might end up in the CIBIL

You got calls from a collection agent for missing this months payment? I thought collection agents call only when there is a few months delay.
Anyways, IMO the best bet is to visit the loan branch and speak to some senior official who has the power to reverse the fees. If you have some proof of the SBT outage, you could attach it along with a strongly worded letter asking for fee reversal.

Personally I wouldn't worry too much about the CIBIL part. If you pay the EMI, it should be fine.