You can deal with a bank in 3 forms:

send them an email

talk to them on phone

visit their branch.

Let us look at a complaint like “I am not able to use my net banking to make a credit card payment which I MAKE every month”.

  1. Email option: In Hdfc bank when you go to net banking and see what kind of emails you can send, you have various options. You go and select ‘Bank account’ under that it allows you only some esoteric options and such mundane things such as bank account not allowing you to make payment does not exist. So you cannot send an email…well not so clearly. I am sure there must be some generic topic which can be used, but my brain did not register it. Sorry, this bank is beyond my limited brain perhaps.
  2. Telephone: Brilliant, the phone gets picked up in the second ring..and then…

Telephone: To continue in English…dial 1

T: For account related ….dial 1

T: Keep your debit card, credit card, Tin, Pin, Customer identification number, …ready…dial 1

T: Sorry you exceeded the time limit

T: dial 6 for complaints

T: you have to indentify yourself..keep your debit card, credit card, Tin, Pin…

its almost impossible to get through to this bank on phone or email.

Exactly why you need an RM. He/she knows how to send an email to somebody higher up who will (hopefully) attend to your problem, of course at their own sweet will.

So the advice is simple: Nice to have an account with Hdfc, but as a standby have 2/3 other accounts with some balance…you never know! Ystday I had to make a payment to my Icici bank credit card. I used my wife’s account…and did the payment…

  1. HSBC and HDFC are probably the MOST CUSTOMER UNFRIENDLY banks.
    These folks set out processes to be outright hostile to customers sometime.

    Why bother with hdfc bank?
    Being a shareholder does not force you to be a customer as well.

  2. Let me pile on.
    Worst bank for me is Axis bank, customer service next to filth.
    When I enter my Thiruvanmiyur branch during the day, bank people with ‘May I help you’ board will be so busy looking at computers afraid that if they look up, I will ask them for service. After 2 mins, I lose my patience and talk to them, they give startling look they just saw an alien.
    After 30 mins of busy computer work, they tell me they cannot execute my request, since another authority is absent. Great.
    Telephone follows the same process – dial 1, dial 2, wrong option, oh, if you cannot find right option, dial 9 to speak to representative.
    If I press 9, I will be on waiting status forever till I drop off, which can be more than 10 minutes.

    And, I raised a serious complaint against the staff one day, frustrated they could not issue me a DD after 1 hr. Suddenly, after a week, someone called me and asked me what happened. After they listened to me for 15 mins, they said it will be ‘closed’ and closed the call! And then, deja vu all over again!

  3. i always said .. even to the bank guys many time that i prefer being your share holder than your customer . I would prefer a man like Mr.Puri looking after my company then me having to deal with him 🙂

  4. What gets my goat is, why do your Relationship Manager needs to come to my office just to get the filled form for KYC and the xerox copies of my docs.All of this when you have a complete web based interface integrated in your netbanking wensite.
    You still prefer to send me your RM, who then starts asking me questions, and then I have to very rudely tell him to not to waste his time on me, as I am not going to buy anything from him.
    This is HDFC Bank.

  5. Arvind Jha, for many cases there are no options in those 3 drop-down boxes. Recently I had to check the refund status for a large amount and I couldn’t find an option for that. Choosing ‘Other’ or some generic option also doesn’t lead anywhere – just shows some unhelpful FAQ.

    An email sent to support@hdfcbank.com usually gets a response within a day or two. But, if you are not in a mindset to wait for those 2 days, you will be really stressed because there is no other proper way to get in touch with them.

    This is the biggest reason why I keep the number of banking and finance products I use, to the bare minimum required. I just can’t deal with them when things go wrong.

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