Why Kotak Bank Is Worst Bank Of India, A Story From Customers Experience
So with 5 years of experience in this sector and having 7-8 banks account I want to talk about the worst bank in India which is Kotak Bank.
Now I have account in these banks or has experience with their banking
Hdfc Bank
ICICI Bank (Experience of handling dad’s current account for 4 yrs)
Yes Bank
Bank of Baroda
Federal Bank
Equitas Bank (Closed after few weeks of use)
DBS Bank
SBI Bank (used only for few months then closed)
Experience with lot of co-operative banks
IDFC First Bank (Experience with employees and some branch visit)
Axis Bank (Handled Dad’s current account for a year)
Now the reason why Kotak Bank sucks and not just kotak but also majority of their subsidiaries or service like Kotak Securities, Kotak consumer loans, Kotak insurance etc is that they start their relationship with customer on basis of lies. Their employees, no matter what services or even if it’s different branch or different city will lie to you in the beginning to get your money.
I’m not sure but I do think it’s the bank management telling them or training them to lie to customer. From their Bank employee to their Sub-Brokers to their loan recovery agent they all lie so flawlessly and without any hesitation or guilt it’s just mind blowing.
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So first of all I started with Kotak Bank with an 811 account, banking wise the features are decent for 0 balance account but the app sucks, 7/10 time it’s useless. I know this is the case with majority of the bank in India but even if it’s 0 balance the bank still charge you if you have not used the account for few months.
Now a year later I had a client who wanted to transfer his physically held shares in his and his son name in Demat which is an offline and hectic process. He needed a join demat and a lot of brokers I called didn’t wanted the work as it was not worth their time. So I called Edel & Kotak, from that Kotak Bank seemed good to me, their guy came to my office, told me that there will be ₹1100-1200 account opening fees which will be reversed in terms of brokerage and client will have to deposit minimum ₹5000 to open it.
As the shares were far valuable than this and the stock was trading at months high I agreed and advised the client to go ahead. As I had kotak bank account he said I should open too, as I already had Zerodha I said 1100 is too much but then I thought it will good to hold stocks for 5-10+ years or apply for IPOs so I went ahead, my kotak bank account had only 1-2k in it and my rest of the money was in stocks and all my incoming payments were due so I had to spend 1-2 week on 1-2k only.
I told him this and said we will open account later, he said the amount won’t be deducted from my kotak bank account, it will deducted when I make a direct deposit in the demat, after lot of yes no I went forward.
I didn’t know when the account was activated as I didn’t received any sms, then I saw around ₹1500 debit in account. I called him but he didn’t pick up my phone.
Now later the client’s dematerialization was rejected by BSE due to some signature mis match, so he tried to withdraw rest of his fund from kotak demat but his balance was negative. He showed me his demat balance on the phone app, they had debited the total ₹5k, when I called that guy he had no explanation for it and then he never picked up my phone again stating he doesn’t pick up call during market hours.
I used my account for few months, applied for an IPO, sold it later then withdraw the fund, for some reason I couldn’t withdraw the remaining ₹2000, I called him and he again never answered.
Later I bought some shares worth ₹2k and they debited my kotak bank account for some maintanence charge which was extremely high compared to Zerodha or Upstox. I literally stopped using the bank account and demat. They had debited around ₹4k + in total with no explanation for the charges.
The client was a very old man so he lost those rejected certificate so we couldn’t do it with another broker, when I met the client again after few months for other work he showed me his Kotak demat was negative ₹4000-5000 something. I was shocked, when I checked mine it was negative 1500 something.
Now few months passed by, I’m going through a liquidity crunch due to some home emergencies, my phone drops total dead as it was 5 yrs old, I need a new phone but I don’t want to liquidate equity and I didn’t had any credit card and HDFC Bank that time was not allowed to issue new credit cards so couldn’t get that too and others will take time.
So checked on Flipkart for any EMI offers and found out that Kotak was giving debit card EMI, I can’t do any work without my phone so I went ahead and bought a 15k phone on 9 months EMI (Including intrest).
Buying process was hassle free, paid few EMIs through the app using pay pending EMI feature, but after few months the feature stopped working so I added the amount in Bank account for auto debit on the due date in morning and it didn’t got debit, I called the customer care and they debited it after few days and charged me 750 for late payment on 1750 EMI.
Their app after that time never worked, I did lot of reinstalling, like literally 15-20 times, tried Gpay, tried their Bill pay feature but they kept charging me late penalty and it pilled up to 8k charges for fucking 15k phone from which I already had paid 12k. That EMI payment feature just won’t work and the bill won’t show up on Gpay until the due date is passed.
No way I was going to pay that so I defaulted on that month EMI and wrote them an e-mail that if they don’t waive this charges I won’t pay my last 2 remaining EMI. No reply for 10 days, then their employees or recovery agent started calling me, I told them my situation and they would straight up lie that my all charges are waived or they will waive and I had to do is pay the current EMI and send them screenshot (So they can basically meet their recovery goal).
They think I’m retarded or something to fall for this and will pay the EMI without settlement, waiver or foreclosure letter.
Now I got tired of these calls so I decided next time their employee tells me my charges are waived I will record the call, pay the Emi then file complaint about how their employees defraud customer just to meet their recovery goals. Got the call, he promised my charges are waived after EMI payment I will get foreclosure letter and all I will have to do is pay last EMI and loan will be closed.
I knew he was faking it but I took the risk, I paid, he said wait for 5 mins for your forclosure letter and then he stopped replying and blocked my number. Unfortunately the call didn’t got recorded but WhatsApp chat were there but not enough. I took this to Kotak on twitter, they lodged a complaint.
I immediately got a mail stating they have taken my complaint for reversal of charges (This was not a reply to my e-mail, they did this after I threatened them that I will post this story online everywhere) few days go by and their twitter team says they can’t find any proof of their employee promising me waiver of charges and same day I got an email stating my complaint for waiver of charges has been rejected.
My only reply to that was fine, I won’t be paying my next even if my Cibil tanks.
I defaulted on the next EMI and got call from another agent giving same promise of pay the emi and I will send the letter, I said repeat this and started recording the call, when he heard the prompt that this call is being recorded he immediately cut the call and I have not received any call from them.
Not only all these, all the people I know who have account in kotak of any type have told me that they have been charged by bank multiple times without zero explanation and their employees straight lie to you to sell you new services.
So whatever you do, don’t go for any thing that is offered by Kotak or it’s subsidiaries. Also whatever salesperson on phone or recovery agent promise you, it’s never true, their only intention is to meet their daily or monthly goal, doesn’t matter if it fucks you. So never believe them.
The story is shared by one of the reader of our business magazine after seeing past articles against kotak bank on our website. He shared this story to several other media houses but none covered it due to heavy marketing spend of Kotak Bank. We have nothing against kotak but as media is voice of people, Inventiva decided to take this article on its website. The sole aim to cover this story is to make sure that banks do not try to be the harassment tool for its customers.
