the richest man in atherstone

At the beginning of December 2005, I opened a new Savings Account to replace my Lloyds TSB Online Saver. I was on track to completing my objective of accumulating a £4'500 Emergency Fund and wanted somewhere to keep it until the time came to use it.

I searched for a Savings Account that offered the best interest rate available and found the ICICI HiSAVE account to be the best boasting an impressive 5.15% AER.

I had heard that a number of people had experienced delays opening this account. An equal number of people had informed me that these problems had since been resolved, so I went ahead and opened the ICICI HiSAVE account.

I had no problems with the set up although, unusually, there was a requirement to post a cheque of £1 to ICICI to get the account going. There was no option to do a bank transfer or use a Debit Card. It took just a couple of weeks to send off the cheque and recieve my username and password.

A few days later, as a test to check that I understood the process, I moved £5 to the HiSAVE account. The money was transferred okay, so I moved an additional £495 over to it. A day or so later, I transferred another £2'000 making a balance of £2'501.

On Christmas Eve, I moved the final £2000 of my Emergency Fund to the account. Then I enjoyed the Cristmas period. On the 29th Dec, I checked the ICICI HiSAVE account online and saw that the total was £6'501! At first I was happy. They'd given me £2'000. Upon checking the statement, my delight quickly changed to horror. ICICI had duplicated my previous transaction taking two lots of £2'000 from my Current Account.

This was a big problem because my Current Account didn't have enough money in it to cover a £4000 debit and I was due to paying bills from it starting on the 1st of January!

I quickly logged out of the ICICI HiSAVE website and logged in to my Lloyds TSB Current Account. Unusually, the money hadn't been debited. I had £4000 in my HiSAVE account that seemed to have come from nowhere!

I thought that there must be some sort of lag and ICICI had put the money into my account early before recieving it, so I called them up. They informed me that this was impossible. I told them I couldn't afford to have £4000 debitted from my linked account but they were very unhelpful and told me that they would contact me in 2 days despite me explaining I needed something done right away. On top of this, it was difficult to understand the representative as the telephone support was provided by an Indian Call Centre. I told them that if the money was taken from my linked account, I would be charged an unauthorised overdraft fee, which I would be forced to forward on to ICICI. Still they were no help!

After 30mins of getting nowhere, I had to take it upon myself to take the following corrective action:

• Called up Lloyds TSB. They told me there was nothing they could do with the Direct Debit (even though it hadn't been debitted yet). I increased my overdraft so that the debitted money would, at least, be authorised although interest penalties would be charged.
• In Lloyds TSB online banking, I noticed I had a Direct Debit which looked as though it was going to ICICI, but the amount was set to 'n/a'. I cancelled this Direct Debit online.
• Logged on to ICICI HiSAVE online banking and requested £2000 be moved back to my linked account.

Later that day I noticed a transaction in my ICICI HiSAVE account for a debit of £2000. I'm not sure if this is the money I requested to be transferred back to my linked account or something ICICI have done in response to my enquiry.

By New Year's Day, still no money had been credited or debited from my Lloyds TSB Current Account. I had £2000 more than I should have in my ICICI HiSAVE account and ICICI have still not contacted me as they promised.

On the 2nd January, I recieved £2000 into my Current Account from my ICICI HiSAVE account, so at this point I had £4000 in my ICICI account that wasn't mine! I emailed my account manager to explain the situation and recieved this very unhelpful reply:

"We would like to inform you that the sum of GBP 4000 has been credited in our account as clear funds on 30-12-05, which implies that your link account has been debited on 30-12-05."

Anyhow, after a week or so, the £4'000 was removed from my account and still no money had been debited from my Lloyds TSB Current Account.

After experiencing stupid cock-ups, very poor customer service and un-understandable call centre operatives, I have decided to close my ICICI HiSAVE and keep with my Lloyds TSB Online Saver for the time being. Although the interest rate is poorer, at least they're helpful when I have a query. I've withdrawn the remainder of the cash and don't expect I'll be doing business with ICICI ever again.