I had a little surprise in store today from ICICI - the bank quietly has imposed a service charge of Rs. 5 + service tax for online fund transfers effective Aug 24th 2009. While the amount is nominal, I am 100% sure this is a regressive step. I was about to do a fund transfer, then realized this service tax, cancelled the transaction and issued a check. I am sure ICICI is going to spend more to process this check.

Is it not in the ICICI’s interest to reduce paper work and efforts? While every other organization is going the extra mile to move things online and cut their costs, not sure of this absolutely regressive decision by ICICI. May be Ms. Kochhar saw this as a huge revenue generating initiative.

This is not the first time ICICI has given such shock treatment to me. They  charged 100/- to my acct since I did not spend min. limit of 10,000/- on the ATM card. When I said, I don’t need the ATM card as my primary transactions are online, they say it is mandatory to have ATM card.

Next time, probably I will just go back to old days, withdraw cash and do cash transactions directly or even better move out of ICICI and go to a better bank.

Filed under: General