Never take Loan Against Shares from IDBI Bank!. Review on IDBI Bank

I had taken a loan against my equity shares from IDBI Bank, Warden Road branch, Mumbai, last year.

Now, since the values of  the shares was slipping, I wanted to sell some shares and close the loan. My share was quoting at Rs.623 when I told them at 2.55 pm, a full 35 minutes before close of market hours, to sell the shares, but they did not sell the shares, citing lack of enough time to carry out the transaction.  This by itself was not acceptable.

Next day, I decided to see the rate and then confirm to them to sell the shares, which I did at about 10.30 am.  However, despite my repeated attempts to find out when and at what rate they sold the shares, they did not inform me on phone or email about the sale.

Then, at about 5 pm, they informed that they have sale orders from all over the country and hence could not sell the shares till market closure time.  I was understandably, quite upset about the whole thing, as my experience with any other bank was not like this.  Normally, they would take about 5 to 10 minutes to get your order executed.

Then, surprisingly, the same staff called me and informed that the shares were sold at market closure time, at about Rs.599 per share, whereas in the morning and even later on during the day, the same shares were selling at about Rs.620 per share.  Further, when they sent me the scanned contract note, it transpired that their internal subsidiary was the broker firm, whereas they had informed me earlier that they themselves handled the transaction.

When I tried to verify the contract on NSE's site, I could not do so, as the number of digits given by them in the contract note was much lesser than the number of digits required by NSE, as per law.  Despite asking them for the same by telephone, email and also complaining to the email address found on their website under CITIZEN'S CHARTER, till date, i.e. after about a week, I am yet to get the required details.  Since I cannot verify on the NSE site after 5 days of the transaction, it means I cannot verify the details now, unless I go through some other, tougher process.

At some point in time, when I asked for the Zonal Manager's number so I could ask for some intervention at a higher level, the relationship person at the branch flatly refused to give me such a number, telling that I can only complain to the call center.  This, despite a very clear Citizen's charter telling that even an oral complaint to the branch official is to be treated as a complaint and acted upon.  As the money involved is mine, I felt that the bank or its staff were least bothered to see what needs to be done.

I have reason enough to now suspect that there are 'fudged' transactions happening in IDBI Bank Capital Markets and they are keeping the good transactions to themselves and passing on the bad transactions to unsuspecting customers!

I had another funny experience with their phone banking.  When I informed them that since shifting to Bangalore, I had not got statements, i.e. from July onwards, (despite giving the change of address personally at Warden Rd branch), they told me that the statements were not delivered due to some reason such as person not available and asked me to collect them from the Warden Rd branch in Mumbai, despite my informing them that I had already shifted to Bangalore!  After I pointed out the foolishness of such an email (this was in response to their follow up!), I never received any reply from the 'Customer Service' person!

Today, I received a mail from the 'Customer Service' suggesting that the official of Warden Rd branch had sorted out all issues, without really bothering to check what happened!  I had to reply back that only the statement issue had been sorted out. I think the only way out may be for me to go to RBI's Banking Ombudsman.

G.M. Srinivasa Bhat