ICICI - Home Loan
Switch over Home loan for existing ICICI customers

Hi Everybody,

This is DEEPAK from Chennai. I had taken a home loan for 14 Lakhs in 2005 @ 7% floating rate. Now i am repaying it at 13.5% rate of interest. Whenever RBI had increased the PLR by 0.5%, ICICI would in turn increase the same by 1%. The same happened thrice within a period of 7 months. Now when the RBI is reducing the PLR, ICICI is totally silent about the existing home loan customers.

It so happened on April 06, where i saw that ICICI is offering a switchover for the existing ICICI home loan customers, to a new interest rate of 9.75%. This news was telecasted in CNN-IBM. The details of the same are given in the link below in moneycontrol site.

http://wealth.moneycontrol.com/features/home-loans/rate-war-icici-drops-home-loan-rates-for-existing-customers-/12762/0

My first thought seeing this is why is such a discrimination made by ICICI between new and existing customers. Also with regard to switching fee, other banks are doing the same for switching from "fixed " to floating" and vice-versa. Why this bank is charging to switch between floating rates itself is my only concern.

Leaving my thoughts apart, i just stepped into the Adyar home loan branch in Chennai for enquiring the procedure. I was shocked by their reply. What they told me was the offer was given only for walk-in customers (not updated in ICICI website) and it got over on March 31. Currently the same offer is provided with a switchover fee @ 1.75% of loan amount. This clearly shows the level of consideration for existing customers. Also when i asked what if the rates fall further, i got a reply that again i need to pay a switching fee for that outstanding principal.

I got totally perturbed by their answers. So i thought of mailing the same to "Senior Management" of ICICI (senior.management@icicibank.com). The reply from their side had disappointed me to the core. They replied me saying

"Dear Mr. Kasturi,

We refer to our e-mail dated April 9 regarding your query related to Home Loan account LBCHE00001217044. We would like to inform you that we are not offering such a scheme.

Rate of Interest applicable to your home loan are subject to change only upon change in Floating reference rate / Prime Lending Rate.

It would be pertinent to mention here that the Bank has reduced the FRR from 14.25% to 13.75% resulting in a reduction of 0.5% in the rate of interest for floating rate loans. The same was effected in your loan account from January 09 EMI onwards.

Any change in the interest rate is communicated to our customers through any of the following medium:

a. Direct mailers to customer

b. Notices at our branches

c. Website We assure you that the bank has always had the customers interest in mind while effecting any change and would continue to do so in the future too.

Sincerely,

Chandrika NaiduManager - Service Quality"

So my humble request from existing customers is to join our hands and fight for our rights. If anybody interested please reply me back to dpak4all@yahoo.com. If required i am planning to file a suit in consumer court as well. It is ridiculous to see a bank chating customers and RBI having no control over the same.

Regards

Deepak

91-9884176320

Company: ICICI - Home Loan
Country: India

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