Think Twice Before Taking Account in ICICI bank (SMAB charges)
Akhil S Kumar 17-03-2014
I am an account holder of ICICI bank for about 8 months only. When I went to take money from the ATM, my money in account was less from the previous days balance. I was thinking why I was having such deduction and I checked my mail and phone whether I received any notification. But I didn’t. Then I went to my personal banking website and checked for the reason. Then I saw a charge of 393.26 rupees in the name of SMAB Chgs-Feb14+Stax 43.26.
Keep an eye
Then I searched in the service-chargessheet of service charges but I did not see the name of the SMAB charge in it. Then I searched over the internet in the key term of “smabchgs in icici bank”. I was receiving tons of websites related to consumer complaints about these charges in Google. Again went over to some sites to know the charge. I was losing about 393 rupees from account each month because I do not have sufficient balance in my account. According to ICICI, the minimum account balance is 10000 rupees. Get it?. If you do not have enough balance in your account you will be charged 393.26 rupees each month which is 4719.12 rupees a year. That is quite lot of money for a common man. I have complained in the consumer court in the URL http://www.consumercourt.in/newreply.php?do=postreply&t=116537 and waiting for the approval of the moderator.
So I was thinking why they are withdrawing money from my account without notifying me and informing me. In one of the sites, consumercout.in, I have seen ICICI Bank Customer Service Teamreplying to the complaints by the following sentence, “We have made a note of your account number. Our official will get back to you soon to assist you”. I am not sure whether they have replied to the individual. This is actually breaking the laws and policies of the Reserve bank of India. There should be strong action against this injustice towards account holders. Anyway I am closing my account in the coming days.
