ICICI Bank Sob Stories

ICICI Bank claims its own site is a phishing site

Here’s an interesting transcript of mails between myself and ICICI Bank. I mailed them that the contact form on their site wasn’t working, and that they don’t have their email addresses anywhere on the site. I received an interesting email from “Head Service Quality” at ICICIBank.com…

Head Service Quality said:

Thank you for writing to us and bringing this e-mail to our notice.

We wish to inform you that the e-mail you received is indeed fraudulent and it has not been sent by ICICI Bank.

This is a scam called “phishing” - and it involves Internet fraudsters who send e-mail messages to lure personal information (Internet Banking User id, passwords, credit / debit card numbers, bank account information, or other personal and sensitive information) from unsuspecting victims. Clicking on the link or even pasting it in the address bar of your browser will take you to a fraudulent site.

[edited to remove another 5 paragraphs of boring template mail rubbish]

I said:

What are you talking about?

I linked to your own site. www.icicibank.com
Did you even bother to read the mail I sent you?

They said:

It has come to our attention that links that lead to a counterfeit ICICI Bank website are in circulation.

The Duplicate Site (”Http instead of Https”) forwarded by you in your e-mail, wherein Padlock sign is missing, is indeed fraudalent.

This is a “phishing” site - where Internet fraudsters lure personal information (credit card numbers, bank account information, passwords, or other personal and sensitive information) from unsuspecting visitors.

We are in the process of bringing the fake site down.

You may continue to transact with ICICI Bank via www.icicibank.com without any apprehension, by keying in www.icicibank.com in the browser window. Keying in the URL is a safe and sure way of avoiding a fraudulent website.

Also, to ascertain the genuineness of any of our sites at any time, please click the small padlock icon at the bottom right of the status bar. When you see the “Security Certificate” issued by Verisign to “infinity.icicibank.co.in”, you can be sure that the site is genuine.

Please visit the “Secure Banking” section on our website for safety tips and more information on a secure Online Banking experience.

[i added the bold emphasis]

I said:

This is my original email to you:

I have been trying, for over 1 hour, to submit a form on your website: https://infinity.icicibank.co.in/web/emailus.jsp
I receive this error message:
Sorry we are unable to process your request.Please try after sometime.
In addition to this, you do not have an email address displayed on any of these pages:
http://www.icicibank.com/pfsuser/sitemap/sitemap.htm
https://infinity.icicibank.co.in/web/emailus/jsp/emailUs.jsp
http://www.icicibank.com/Pfsuser/customer/html/customer_carenew_v3.html
https://infinity.icicibank.co.in/web/emailus/jsp/error.jsp
https://infinity.icicibank.co.in/salesEARWeb/web/rbi/jsp/complaintForm.jsp

Except for two, all of them are secure links, signed by infinity.icicibank.com

If you believe that your own site icicibank.com is a phishing site, and you’re working towards shutting it down, good luck with that. Let me know how that goes.

I wish you’d take the trouble of reading your customer mails before replying to them. Please read my mail again and see if you can understand what my complaint is about.

They said:

Thank you for your e-mail.

We treat such instances with the utmost priority and seriousness and affirm that we do everything possible to nab scamsters who are involved in phishing incidents.

Our Technology Unit works with various agencies from across the globe and our Fraud Prevention Unit reports such cases to the police and extends its co-operation and assistance to the cyber-crime cell to aid in their investigations.

As suggested earlier, please visit the ‘Secure Banking’ and “Safe Banking” sections on our website for tips and more information on a secure online banking experience. We reassure you that our website is safe for use.

Looking forward to more opportunities to be of service to you.

I said:

Dear Person Who Reads This Mail,

Let me spell this out clearly for you. In uppercase letters:

MY MAIL WAS NOT ABOUT PHISHING.
MY COMPLAINT WAS ABOUT A FAULTY FORM ON YOUR OWN WEBSITE.

Do you guys even know what’s going on with your bank? With your website? With your lives? With your garden sprinklers?
Still reading? Good.

No reponse from them after that. I guess they went ahead and shut down their own site for being involved in phishing activities. Or someone finally realized their mistake.

This Is Final Crap - Addressing issues with ICICI Bank

I have a credit card with ICICI Bank. one of the biggest mistakes of my life… It’s been quite a while since I started contacting them to correct my postal address, my phone number, my email address, and my name on their records.

Wait a minute… they have my contact details wrong, and they even have my name wrong? Perhaps the card isn’t mine, after all? No… it’s mine. I have the card. And I’ve been using it.

So I could just bill up all I want and walk away from it all, couldn’t I? Yes I could.

And they’d have no way way of contacting me, or getting the money from me? That be right.

So, did I? Nopes.

But what do I do instead? I contact them, time and again, over several months, trying to get them to correct my details. Because I try to be a decent person, after all. It’s another thing altogether that I abuse the hell out of the retards employed by ICICI’s “Customer First” call centre. I keep trying to explain to them that if I don’t pay, they have no way of recovering the money due to them. They don’t get it, though.

After much fighting and abusing, I finally got through to one of their “team leaders” who happened to have a shred of intelligence about her. She actually got things rolling, for a bit. I got a couple of letters from them confirming that I’d asked for a change of address, delivered to me at my new address. But nothing after that… a call centre guy said that the verification agents came to my house, and the neighbours said I don’t live there. How about them asking me, perhaps? I’d have a better idea than my neighbours, I think. After all: I know my name; I know I live at my address; and I’ve just shifted in.

And this verification agency business happened twice. The second time, they didn’t give any reason for my address change not being confirmed.

Last week, they finally got my postal address corrected… Strange, considering that my neighbours still don’t know my name, and nobody came home to check whether I live there.

Exhausting business, I tell you…