ICICI Bank Fees/Charges

Have you been frustrated with crazy fees/charges from ICICI that don't make any sense?For example: fee for changing transaction or login password, counting fees, maintaining quarterly balance, account inactivity, etc.

Of all the international standard banks, I have found ICICI fees to be the worst and quite a few of them absolutely don't make any sense. I feel cheated when I get charged with those stupid fees for a couple of reasons. One, they are ridiculously high (Example: 400+ rs for resetting my password) and secondly, most of the time the customer is unaware of the fees until they get charged by ICICI.

Customer should know before hand if there are any fees/charges associated with any activity/task/request being made.
If you have been charged some ridiculous fees by ICICI, please comment with the details on the fees (amount and the name of the charge). I couldn't find a single place where ICICI lists all the various fees associated with a type of account.

I want customers to be aware of all the hidden fees that ICICI charges to customers before they consider opening an account with them.

UPDATE: Just got information from ICICI on all the fees associated with my account - http://www.icicibank.com/Pfsuser/icicibank/ibank-nri/nrinewversion/service_charges.htm

iPhone in India

Lot of your folks back home in India must be desperately waiting for buying the new iPhone 3G and wondering the details of the launch in India.

Here are a few places online where you can track the details of the same.

Apple iPhone India Site - http://www.apple.co.in/iphone/buy/
Airtel Site - http://www.airtel.in/iphone3g
Vodafone Site - http://www.vodafone.in/existingusers/iphone/Pages/preregister-iPhone.aspx

There is no exact date and price announced for the phone in India.

Look for new updates related to iPhone launch in India.

What is India googling for?

Ever wondered what is India searching for on Google? Check out the Google Trend site for India updated every few minutes to reflect the most popular keywords by Indians.

You can add it as a gadget onto your iGoogle home page to monitor on a regular basis. It's a great way to track about what users in India have on their mind.

check it out at - http://www.google.co.in/trends/hottrends?sa=X

Listen to Hindi Music Online - Dhingana.com

Just came across this phenomenal Web 2.0 style music site called Dhingana. It's by far the best site that I have come across in years for listening to hindi music online. It has features like song sharing, smartlist, ratings, leave comments and a whole suite of social networking type features.

Goodbye to sites like raaga.com, and smashits which look very old style, and annoying after the great experience on dhingana.com. Dhingana is addictive and it's now in my top 10 sites that I visits everyday. For an Internet addict with being online for over 10 hours everyday browsing large number of sites it's awesome. This tells how happy I have been with the quality of the service delivered by Dhingana.

Enjoy!!!

Real Estate in Pune

Last week, I was in Pune on house hunting trip so thought of sharing my experience and finding out more from you all about your experiences.

Here are some of the interesting properties and areas that I got chance to check out.

1. Magarpatta - Rate was around 3500/sq ft for apartment. Good project overall with appartments in a couple of buildings open for sale. This project seemed to offer good amenities like hospital, shopping mall, swimming pool, etc. It's close to Hadapsar area so as soon as you get out of Magarpatta you are hit with chaotic Pune traffic which can be extremely frustrating.

It has a small IT park with small to mid-size IT companies (like Avaya, Sybase, etc) at the center of the project.

2. NIBM - This is a pretty good locality I felt, perfect for retirees as it is quite and away from the main city chaos.

Couple of interesting projects in this area were Cloverfield which has row houses available for 5500/sq ft ready for possession. Another one was named California which was quite awesome but expensive at the same time running at 4850 for 3 bedroom apartments. One of the buildings has swimming pool on each floor. The one i thought was of good value was the Palm Spring project of approx 45 bunglows by Kumar Builders which was running at 4000/sq ft.

3. Wakad - I checked out 2 projects at this location. Park Street and Park Royale both by Pride Purple group. Park Street project over 80 acre land looked quite impressive. Rate was around 3300/sq ft for 3 bedroom apartment. I am seriously considering investing in Park Street and would love to hear from anyone who has recently purchased property there.

4. Kalyaninagar - This was the most expensive of all the places I had been. There were couple of projects by Kumar Builder that I had checked out. They were ok and didn't look as attractive as Park Street or California for the price they were quoting.

5. Hinjewadi - There is only 1 project that seems to have all the buzz which is Blue Ridge by Paranjape group. The early phase of the project seemed to have gotten sold in just 2 days. There were none available when I was there. The last sale was at 3250/sq ft for 3 bedroom appartment. 

6. Audh - I wasn't much impressed with the city but it seems to be quite popular choice with quite a few IT folks., The one project that I checked out there was Roseland Residency. It looked descent but I didn't felt good about the overall city look.

If you have recently purchased property in Pune, I would like to hear your comments, suggestions so please feel free to post/write your feedback here so that we can all help each other and use power of the Internet to avoid falling in trap of cunning builders. Not to say that all builders are bad but I definitely felt that builders are usually not very open and transparent about all the details. They do sometimes lie/modify/forge about the real data/facts about their projects just to create hype to force customer into a rush decision which usually ends up in customer frustration and overprice sale.