I have been facing a very strange problem for quite several years right in
ICICI bank.
If you have a current account with ICICI bank, you can add as many non-ICICI payees as you want for NEFT transactions. Adding, verifying and paying a new non-ICICI payee through your ICICI current account can be done within 2-3 minutes of time all online.
However, as ironic and strange as it may sound, if you want to pay AN ICICI BANK PAYEE through your same ICICI current account, you CANNOT do it online until you add that person by duly filling up a form (provided by ICICI branch only), submitting that form IN THE BRANCH for approval and addition of that payee in your payees list, and then only you will be able to pay that payee online.
So every time if you want to pay a new ICICI bank payee from your ICICI current account, it is going to cost you 1-2 visits to the branch personally and 2-3 working days of waiting. Pathetic.
This is not the case with other banks, at least such as HDFC, in which you can add any payee - HDFC or non-HDFC - all online with having to visit in or take approval from a branch. They approve the payee - HDFC or non-HDFC - within 24 hours, and then you can pay them as and when required. Even with ICICI Saving A/c there is no such partiality b/w same and other bank's payees and you can add any of them online.
I have asked many a time ICICI executives - in the branch and on the phones - why such lengthy process for just adding a same bank payee in one's current account? "RBI guidelines", comes the reply. "Why those guidelines does not apply with other banks and with the saving accounts of your bank?" Ans.: "cannot comment on other bank's rules and regulations and saving accounts are a different matter".
Come on !!!!