ICICI – calculations gone phut. Or is it Vendor (Finacle)?
Have a look at the above image (click to zoom). That’s basically a summary of my credit card purchase points.
- Opening Balance= 5269
- Earned = 1032
- and Closing ? — Instead of adding the above 2, ICICI has subtracted the earned from opening .
Well, it seems like a simple issue (which doesn’t really affect me in the short run) – I am just furious to see the quality of dumbos that ICICI recruits (don’t these guys have a testing process?) Or is it the vendor’s (Infy?) fault?
After all, ICICI uses Infy’s Finacle software (can somebody please confirm?)
Does that shows the quality of people who are responsible for implementation – dumbos don’t even understand the difference between ‘+’ and ‘-’ operator? Request ICICI guys to comment on this.
Oh by the way- do you guys commit the same *coding mistakes* with the credit amount? i.e. instead of adding a purchase amount – do you subtract them? I would love that.
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Its pretty obvious that it has nothing to do with the software. With so many other MNC banks worldwide as well as major indian banks using the same software it cant be as simple a coding error as this.
Sometimes the bank has some fineprint policies regarding reward points under cash back situations which need to be understood.
You pointed it right – These calculations are custom-done (varies from bank-to-bank implementation)
Being an end user, it doesn’t really matter to me whether the s/w works for the other bank or not – what I find funny is that this can be considered a DRASTIC mistake in US (and maybe liable for a lawsuit!) but is considered *okay* in India..(chalta hai!!)
And NO bank can calculate points = Previous – new! Not even ICICI
Hmm..they shd focus on quality recruitment
Ashish… You’re lucky this happened to only your card credit reward points!
Citibank gifted me a year-long gift last year when, thanks to the back-office processing division (that I believe is built around the chaos theory but misses the point altogether), my auto loan ECS SIMPLY DID NOT HAPPEN for 8 months!! And each month, we reissued orders requesting (read: imploring) them to reinstate the facility.
Result = bad credit record with my salary account and auto loan financier (HDFC), penalities for late payment and check bounces, gadzillion tons of stress and endless driving to their full-to-overflowing branch on lazy Saturday mornings!!
And till the last month of this episode where i switched from Citi to Stan Chart, they still did not agree that the ECS instruction was NOT ACTIVE on my account while the money simply did not get released on the 5th of the month… sheeesh!
Man!! this is awful..I think it’s just that companies take things for granted – and if you follow the ‘consumer court’ route, you will wait endlessly.
Esp. Stan C sucks big time – I have been trying to cancel my credit card and it’s been 3 months and my card is still active.
I guess you are transacting with 2 worst banks
I guess, one of the best banks is HSBC – they don’t really disturb me and service (so far) is good. But the irony is that they don’t offer too many services (like auto loans etc. have been withdrawn).
FYKI … ICICI does not use Finacle for Credit Cards and one more info to u .. In Fincale there is no Crdeit Cards module .
so do not blame anyone b4 u know the exact facts
And that’s why the ‘?’ mark in the post.
Post is more about ICICI and less abt Infy!!
- It’s the implementation team which is responsible for such stupid mistakes- but of course it’s important to know the configuration of such teams
ICICI is known for all this!! Infact, they have been in news for their loan recovery process (using*goondas*) etc. and were dragged to the court too.
Ashish you’re not alone…I just checked my account and they have made the same mistake. 2519 + 582 = 1937…and just when I was planning to redeem some of em points for some New Year’s goodies too…what a nightmare!
And if you call their customer care they will have no idea on what you are talking about!!
All they would like to know is ‘Saar! Are you interested in personal loan’!!
From Anil
They do use Finnacle. I was with some ICICI compnay, so know that for sure.
Calling customer care/of emailing manager is of no use. They are dumb ass people.
Yeah, even I remember once speaking to a relationship manager and he mentioned ‘Finacle is down – can’t check your credit limit’..
Anyways, what matters is it’s ICICI who is the culprit.. and the mistake (though small it is) shows their credibility
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OK, so I complained to my ICICI a/c manager and that fetched me a prompt call from my “credit card a/c manager” whoever that is. This is her explanation:
Apparently there’s a cash back scheme for the (calendar) months Oct, Nov and Dec that I mysteriously got subscribed to (I don’t remember doing it myself). The cashback (on amounts > 2000 INR authorised on ICICI slips only) varies between 1% and 100% depending (if I understood her correctly) on the sum total of all digits in the authorisation code for that transaction.
My points tally as on 18th Sep (date of statement generation)was 1795. For the period 19 Sep- 18 Oct, I earned 724 points for various expenses made on my card. These were credited into my a/c since the poor darlings “don’t want our customers to suffer any loss on our account”. So my total showing on the statement generated on 18th October was 2519.
However because of the brilliant cashback offer that our friends are running, I won cashbacks on 5 separate transactions (all either 1% or 2% cashbacks). So according to the rules of this scheme, all the points I earned on those transactions- in this case 592 points- are debited from my points tally. Clear so far? So my ACTUAL tally as of 18-Oct is not 2519 but 2519 – 592 = 1927.
My statement generated on 18-Nov will show me how many points I have earned in the period 19-Oct to 18-Nov. This is a batch operation run on the day your statement is generated, so if you check your interim statement (on Infinity net banking for example) the points earned are not updated. The opening balance in that statement would be not 2519 but 1927 plus the points I earned that cycle. However, in the NEXT statement after that, the opening balance again would be corrected for the points redeemed against cashbacks. Phew!
So you see it’s not the software’s fault but the bank’s Marketing team’s(and I am not just saying this cuz I used to work with the Finacle team!) They design all these high-falutin schemes and screw up royally in the execution. Firstly, I was never told that I was being subscribed to a scheme like this. Secondly, the accounting is plain wrong…the 592 should have showed up in “points redeemed” and NOT “points earned”, no matter when it is accounted for. Thirdly and most importantly, why run a scheme on a calendar separate from the billing calendar? Wouldn’t it be a lot more convenient and easy to calculate if the scheme runs for three cycles of billing in the broad period Oct-Dec (e.g. my scheme could run from Oct 19th- Jan 18th), while somebody with a billing date of 25th could have hers run from Oct 26th- Jan 25th and so on. (To complicate things, the cashbacks are all calculated by ICICI and credited on the 5th of the next month. So it results in inflated view of your points one month and reduction in the next, which is why a lot of people got upset in the first place.)
I heard the young lady out patiently and told her in no uncertain terms that this scheme has been designed by a moron (likely some birght-eyed bushytailed IIM-read facha, sadly) and that in all my years of dealing with banks and credit card companies I have never seen a more laughable example of a scheme gone awry. She tried to rebut this by saying that this scheme has met with an “unexpectedly overwhelming” response, which doesn’t affect me in the least because this is the first I am hearing of it. Then she attacks me instead, saying if I am not interested in the scheme, I should please send them an email to unsubscribe and get points instead of cashbacks. In my most gentle sarcastic tone I replied that since my opinions had not been sought when subscribing me to this scheme, would the bank really value it now, to get me off the same scheme? It’s your money, I went on relentlessly, do what you want with it. If you decide next month, for example, that you want to take away all my reward points, go right ahead, that’s your prerogative.
But I was fair- I told the young lady I had nothing against her personally- she was only doing her job (and doing it rather well I must add). But would she please bring to the attention of her managers that customers were unhappy with the way this scheme has been designed and executed. Perhaps in future such unpleasantness could be avoided by timely, effective communication and better systemic controls.
Personally, I think cashbacks in lieu of points is a great idea- which is why I didn’t unsubscribe from the offer even it was offered to me. But the way this particular scheme has been run makes me shudder. ICICI prides itself on being a technology-savvy, customer-centric bank. They should live up to that reputation instead of sullying it.
Thanks buddy for providing the insight!
Its true that there is a lot of disconnect between the marketing team and the delivery team (everywhere!), and the ones who get screwed up are the customer-facing teams i.e. call center/services etc.
I just hope ICICI doesn’t commit such mistakes in future..