Terrible experience with @AxisBank this evening. They have randomly closed my account claiming KYC not completed. This is after I had visited the designated branch & the officer there had confirmed it was complete.

Anyone else they've tried to pull this with?

. @AxisBankSupport is completely unhelpful. Polite d professional, no complaints there, but so constrained that they can't accommodate any customer request at all.

They can't check why the account is marked as KYC incomplete when the branch told me it was.

They can't appeal or reverse.

They say I was sent communications / notices. True - each of which also said "if you have completed KYC you can ignore this" - so how is one to tell?

Gets better.

Guess how you complete KYC? By going to a bank branch. In this pandemic?!

Apparently the money will be refunded by demand draft.

Where will it be sent? The address on my documents - which, again, I submitted as required - which is obviously a permanent address, where I do not currently live.

Okay, they say, DD will come back to branch. Collect it...

... from the branch.

Again - in this pandemic?!

The Delhi government is pleading with people to stay home & minimise contact with others, & @AxisBankSupport wants customers to travel to bank branches or forfeit their money.

BTW, even if the DD was sent to an address where I could collect it - I would have to go to a branch to deposit it. Same problem.

DD will expire within 3 months of issue date. (Who knows how many days it will be till I get it in the first place?) So again: risk COVID or forfeit.

I asked if they could arrange the refund over electronic transfer. (I understand having a DD sent to an alternate address is unlikely, but transferring electronically to the account it came from should be simple & has no security risk. You can verify it is my account!)

Still no. This is puzzling - @AxisBank , it's 2020. And months into a pandemic. Why is your policy to send account closure balances by DD instead of an electronic transfer back to the origin account?

Do you actively want to force customers to travel & risk exposure to COVID?

I asked the @AxisBankSupport associate to escalate my call. He did, to a gentleman named Uday (he told me a full name, won't use it in a public forum).

Uday was again polite & professional but completely unhelpful. Repeated same policy. Asked him to escalate. He says he can't.

This is also strange. @AxisBankSupport (& every business that runs a BPO customer support) has to have, at some point, a nodal or regional officer whom customers with unresolved complaints can reach. A rule that says a customer service exec can't escalate to them is unethical.

All that Uday could offer me was a call reference number, & his promise that he would make a clear note the complaint was not resolved & he was unable to comply with any of the customer's requests, including for escalation.

He couldn't even give me an email ID to write to.

Gets better. The bank branch won't have access to the call record. They can only see Uday's notes.

So I have to call them & explain the issue all over again - an issue that arose *because of their mistake*.

If they look up the call number and say "no notes"? I have no recourse

In short:

@AxisBankSupport system is unhelpful & pointless.

No one at @AxisBank proper - as opposed to a call centre - will deign to talk to a customer.

I have little choice but to conclude that @AxisBank wants to force it's customers to choose between money & safety.