Upheld: failure to respond to customer communications / poor customer service complaint against ICICI Bank UK Plc

Decision detail

Summary

Miss B complained that ICICI Bank UK Plc failed to respond to her emails after the bank sent an account closure notice on 18 June. Miss B replied to the auto-generated email asking about her account balance and sent multiple follow-up emails to different addresses without receiving responses. The ombudsman found that while ICICI was reasonable in not responding to the auto-generated email (which explicitly stated not to reply), it should have responded to emails sent to the Customer Relations inbox. The ombudsman upheld the complaint and ordered ICICI to pay £50 compensation for the inconvenience caused by the failure to acknowledge contact received to the Customer Relations inbox.

The Ombudsman's reasoning

The ombudsman found that while ICICI was reasonable in not responding to the auto-generated email (which explicitly stated not to reply), it should have responded to emails sent to the Customer Relations inbox. Although there is conflicting evidence about whether ICICI received all of Miss B's emails to that inbox, the ombudsman determined that ICICI failed to acknowledge contact it did receive and should have either responded or advised Miss B that the case was with the Ombudsman. The ombudsman noted that ICICI had sent three pieces of correspondence asking Miss B to contact them, making a response or acknowledgement reasonable.

How this compares

Source

Read the original decision on the Financial Ombudsman Service website