Housing Loan Fraud By Icici Bank

I availed housing loan from ICICI bank, and experienced several fraudulent/unethical practices followed by ICICI Bank, some of these issues are summarized here. If anyone wants to publish, I can
provide all the documentary evidence.

I am hoping that we all can expose these and alert others so that they do not get duped by ICICI, and that other Banks/HFCs who may be engaged in such practices also are forced to stop such malpractices.

Here is the summary:

*1. Lures new customers or other customers to balance-transfer loans from other banks/HFCs with lower ROI (and promising freebies) under a particular reference "Prime Lending Rate" . Once they get customer, starts arbitrarily increasing ROI/PLR, while introducing new PLR (with a new name) again to lure new customers. Customers who already availed loan get penalized.

*2. Has multiple PLRs, which is illegal as per RBI guidelines.

*3. Promises freebies (in writing) e.g. free insurance cover and property insurance to borrowers, however once the loan is availed, no insurance is provided or policy sent to customers.

*4. Forces customers to pay fees for reduction in ROI to market levels on floating rate loans, however ROI is arbitrarily increased without any fees. Forces one sided changes in loan agreemement during any requests for synchronizing ROI with market rates.

*5. Presents EMI post-dated cheques late with clearing house, and charges penalty on customers for it’s own delay.

*6. No quarterly/annual account statements are sent although the admin fees is charged in advance.

*7. Charges interest soon after sanction i.e. before the actual disbursement of loan. I had to pay interest on the loan which was not even disbursed for a few days.

*8. Refuses to provide any useful information (including account balance, interest paid, foreclosure statements, balance-transfer procedures etc) on request to customer-care center.

*9. Puts undocumented conditions such as part-prepayment for change in EMI, minimum part-prepayment, limits on number of times part-prepayments can be made.

*10. Charges undocumented fees/conditions under different heads explioting grey areas - e.g. for swapping cheques fees when EMI is changed, switchover fees from floating to floating ROI within same product, and also from one product to newer better product, part-prepayment and foreclosure penalties which are not initially informed/documented, ’documentation fees’ for prepayment.

*11. Several verbal promises made by agents (e.g. doorstep service, processing and disbursal on/before a promised date, simple documentation, single point of contact etc), however, the customer finds that none of these promises are honoured once the loan is availed.

Customer Care(less) Dept:
ICICI doesnt even bother to reply to the complaints filed repeatedly, in person with their branch/head offices. In some cases, however, they will send a irrelevant communication (e.g. arithmetic equation ROI=PLR+Margin, or an ’request’ to visit their branch office again for clarification), without showing even an intent to resolve the complaint. Clearly frauds done with an willful intent, and definitely no errors.

Sales Dept:
Effective, able to lure customers into one-sided agreements! Doesn’t give a hint that the customer is being cheated :-) Limited badmouthing of other HFC/Banks though.

- Parag

Parag Palsapure
Nerul, Navi Mumbai