Am I the only one or do all ICICI customers and many non-customers routinely get legitimate looking ICICI bank communication sent via domains which are not icicibank.com and un-subscription forms(hosted on non https server again not icicibank.com) which ask for way more information about you than is required to un-subscribe you. Infact the so called donotcall forms might be used to generate illegitimate leads as opposed to un-subscribing a person who has been spammed and tried to un-subscribe in good faith.

There is a fraud waiting to happen on a large scale and ICICI Bank is responsible. The sleazy Internet practices of clueless, security un-conscious Indian banks and other businesses needs a large doze of self-regulation and infusion of clue.

Indian banks please get a clue. Do not send communication to people who didn't sign up for it. There is no point in a person trying to un-subscribe from a Lead Management System, as everytime a marketing moron decides that he can use the database to start marketing yet another useless and dishonest banking product. Ethics and 'non-fee based' activities of Indian banks obviously don't go together.

For e.g. its dishonest to run ads for apartments on portals and then using that leads database to try and sell retail banking products. Using the leads for a purpose other than they were collected is un-ethical and counter productive.

Which idiot runs mission critical trading sites on Winblows. Apparently ICICIDirect does. And they go down right in the middle of a trading day. Happening right now the IIS 500.13 error code web server too busy.

Update: 5 minutes later They are back in action, perhaps a (winblows)reboot or something helped.

NIXI Fee Structure based on ports. What? Does a managed switch cost them a lot less to maintain if they configure it at a speed of 2Mbps. Did someone explain to NIXI that their aim is not to be a for-profit company, and they shouldn't be buying 2Mbps transit bandwidth but figuring out how to peer the ISPs at multi-100-megabit speeds by asking government/BSNL to subsidize transit for small ISPs/Content producers/hosts/Open Source software mirrors through leased line circuits over citywide metro-ethernet(s) they have created.

ISPs will continue to pay lip-service to NIXI, until more IT managers buying premium corporate bandwidth start asking tough questions about local peering, which incidentally affects the quality of service for their users more than an average home user. More often than not I used to get clueless looks from salespeople who came to sell bandwidth when asked about peering in India. Some of higher-ups in the ISPs would claim to have several E1 circuits to the NIXI(not at which POP and which ISP's do they actually peer with).

For sure an ISP letting botnet infected subscribers continue to connect to Internet, shoving more DDOS/SPAM traffic to other ISPs should be paid at the rate of Rs. 50/GB, talk about incentives for evil

Would someone file an RTI query(I am too lazy a blogger) with BSNL, MTNL and NIXI as to what port speeds and at what POPs (Point of Presence) do the ISPs with largest number of Broadband subscribers connect peer at with which other ISPs.

The prices of co-location in India do not provide enough incentive for content providers to move content from US/Europe to India not even for content hosts in say geographically close countries like Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand etc. The Indian non-IT content companies do get taken in by the promise of lower latency(due to geographical closeness) from Indian datacenters to indian subscribers but it ends up being an endless wait for promised future improvement in services(or perhaps Datacenters are able to blame it away on poor last mile connectivity, or the content hosts never saw what local content delivery should look like with local hosting).

Is it so hard to figure out that NIXI trying to act as a carrier neutral telecom hotel for content hosting instead of a Peering POP will not work.

A few weeks back before I went to a short 2 week trip to US, I provided an ICICI 'bank official' at my office with a lead by filling a ICICI lead form(paper) for opening an ICICI direct depository and share trading account. The form mentioned the date and time which ICICI should call me. I was surprised when I got a call on correct date and time when I came back. The person who called me asked if I had wanted an ICICI 'share trading' account and if he can come down and have me fill up the form. Sweet!! I thought, these guys are methodological. Now once I came into the reception area of the office sure I found this person. He hands me over an indiainfoline.com depository/share trading account form and ... I am like what the **** is that.
Agent: Sir we have a tie-up with ICICI
Myself: Maybe, your depository allows linkup with an ICICI bank account for direct funds transfer which definitely doesn't constitute an exclusive tie-up for providing depository services to ICICI customers. Moreover I had asked an ICICI bank officer to send someone over for opening a ICICIdirect depository/trading account.
Agent: Sir our transaction costs are lower.
Myself: Its a question of ethics, you guys are un-ethical, can I speak to your manager.
Agent: Calls up the 'manager' on his cellphone
Myself to 'manager': Which company do you work for
'manager': Sir I work for indiainfoline.com ,
Myself: Ah! so how come you are able to obtain an ICICI bank's lead ??
'manager': Sir our trading account is cheaper ...
Myself: Yes but it is un-ethical and I shall complain to ICICI bank about how their leads are getting leaked.
......
A few minutes later I try the customer support numbers mentioned on ICICI bank's website and sure enough I am un-able to get through to a live human in any reasonable amount of time. So ICICI bank is blind and deaf in realtime which is the difference between a customer being defrauded and being able to obtain authentic information in good time.

Now I don't really know or care if ICICI bank is promoting indiainfoline.com instead of their own icicidirect service even to customers who specifically asked to buy it or it is their DSA( Direct Sales Agency) in Bangalore which decided that they get higher margins by selling ICICI customer information to direct competitors. Now all that remains to be done is that my ICICI bank account needs to closed and this recommendation for my friends(and readers of this blog) on perils of dealing with financial institutions that are ethically challenged or blind/deaf/un-reachable to their customers. I am not claiming that indiainfoline.com has a company policy of being un-ethical, maybe they just happened to hire an ethically challenged sales agent/sales agency.

Update: After several weeks of trying to get an account from error-ridden DSA's of reliancemoney, sharekhan, religare etc. I eventually settled for opening an icicidirect account and retaining icici bank account. Welcome to the world of 'real' choices that India provides.