Okay now to the meat of the story. I decided to put some money into a couple of Liquid Plus funds and after some research on Value Research shortlisted 3 funds.

• FORTIS Money Plus Fund – Regular GROWTH
• JM Money Manager Fund – Super Plan Growth
• DWS Cash Opportunities Fund – Regular Plan GROWTH

Then I headed over to ICICIDirect to make the purchases. I bought the Fortis fund as well as the JM fund. Then I started the process of purchasing the DWS fund. That is when the fun started…

ICICIDirect is showing INCORRECT Data for both the Value Research Star Rating as well as the Fund’s NAV

Problem No# 1

The Purchase link takes the user to a Fund search page and subsequently to a search results page. The search results for DWS is in the screen shot above. Note the incorrect data displayed on this page. ICICIDirect is supposedly showing the Value Research Star Rating and in this page is showing NA instead of the correct 5 Star Rating. Secondly the NAV displayed is INCORRECT! Not just stale (16 Oct 2009) but incorrect. The correct NAV for 16th Oct 2009 is 12.0755 as you can see from the DWS web site in the screen shot below.

Value Research Page for the same DWS fund

Correct NAV for Oct 16, 2009 from the DWS web site.

I ignored the mistakes in the ICICIDirect page for the fund and clicked the “Purchase” button for the DWS Cash Opportunities Fund. This is what I got:

ICICIDirect Purchase page for the DWS Cash Opportunities Fund’s Growth Option!

Problem #2

See the problem above? I selected the Growth Option for the DWS Cash Opportunities Fund but this page is showing me the Div-Reinvestment Check Box as if for a Dividend Option! I called Customer Support and after a 5 minute wait & a transfer to another section (I selected Online Trading –> Queries in the automated menu!) I was told that “The Final Confirmation Page will have the Div-reinvestment check box disabled and HENCE there is no problem”

Okay, so I go there. Entered an amount and clicked the “Proceed for Confirmation” button, leaving the Div-Reinvestment check box “Unchecked”. This is what I got:

Final Confirmation page for DWS Cash Opportunities Fund purchase

See for yourself! Does that page make sense? I am buying the Growth Option of a Mutual Fund and this screen is telling me that my Dividend will Not be Reinvested!

Secondly note that the “Final Confirmation” page is still showing me the wrong NAV!

To double check I went back to the Fortis fund I had purchased earlier…

Fortis Fund – Growth Option & NO Div-Reinvestment Check Box!

Everything is as it should be! No Div-Reinvestment Check Box shows up on this screen. I then entered an amount and clicked the “Proceed for Confirmation” button…

Opps! Growth Option AND the Div-Reinvestment Check Box is Back!

I had not noticed this before. Most probably I had not paid enough attention to this. The Div-Reinvestment check box is unchecked & disabled but present on the “Final Confirmation” page for the purchase of the Growth Option of a Mutual Fund!

How am I, the customer, supposed to read this screen? My Growth Fund will give me Dividend Payouts? Or am I just supposed to blindly believe that ICICIDirect knows what it is doing and that this is really the Growth Option and no Dividends will be paid out?

Of course the liability is mine. because if the above statement is NOT true then they can always point at their software’s UI and say – “See that Div-Reinvestment Check Box? It means that YOU screwed Up!”

Stupid ICICIDirect!

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In addition to the above, ICICI Bank has introduced time restrictions. They will not accept transactions outside these timings:

NEFT Transaction Timing from Monday to Friday: Cut Off time 3:45 PM (IST).
NEFT Transaction Timing on Saturday: Cut Off time 11:45 AM (IST).

Also no transfers allowed on NEFT holidays. I will try to post the holiday list here.
ICICI also lists EFT timings! Not sure what this means. They said that EFT is not supported any more and they list EFT timings!

EFT Transaction Timing from Monday to Friday: Cut Off time 1:00 PM (IST)
EFT Transaction Timing on Saturday: Cut Off Time 11:00 AM (IST)

Note also that there is no Start Time mentioned. Is it 9.00 am? Does anybody know?

One thing I don’t understand is why Electronic Fund Transfers are time bound at all. And why holidays? Defeats the whole purpose of Electronic Transfers! RBI are you listening? Do you have a human being sitting at a terminal managing these transfers? Wake up and sniff the 21st century air buddy. You have just taken a step backwards into the last century!

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Anyway, I submitted my application forms and walked away. One of the forms was for a Fidelity Equity Fund.

Today I received a fat envelope from CAMS and I saw Fidelity through the plastic address window. I put it aside for later and went to have dinner, thinking it was the statement for the first SIP installment.

When I opened it after dinner, I was surprised to see a SIP Rejection Letter!

SIP Rejection Letter from CAMS (click picture for full size image)

Reason given:

Post dated Cheques are not accepted (Except for SIP Plan)

And guess what I had applied for? A SIP!

SIP Application Form (Click picture for full size image)

I have to take the damn form back to CAMS tomorrow. And I think I will do something $%#@*&^## to the idiots there. Also in the plan is a visit to the local Fidelity office.

Fidelity Secunderabad

No 1-8-304-307, 3rd Floor,
Kamala Towers, Pattigadda Street No 1,
(above Mody Ford showroom), Begumpet,
Secunderabad 500003.

CAMS Secunderabad

102, First Floor
Jade Arcade
Paradise Circle
Secunderabad – 500 003

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Anyway, I proceeded to enter all the details and clicked the Submit button. To my surprise a JavaScript alert box popped up with the message “Please enter valid Address”. The address box is a multi-line free text area and I would expect it to accept anything I enter. I was surprised it had a validation built in!

I then right clicked on the FireFox tab and changed the rendering engine to IE (Long Live FireFox!) because some of these Indian web sites are built specifically for IE and will not work well with other browsers like FireFox. Again I entered the address (same as before) and once again it gave me the same ugly JavaScript alert box.

I immediately dove into the HTML source and found the following code:

if (address.value!='') {  var checkAdd =  "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789_
#,./-' ";  var checkStrAdd =address.value;  var allValidAdd = true;  for (m = 0;  m< checkStrAdd.length;  m++)    {   ch = checkStrAdd.charAt(m);   for (n = 0;  n < checkAdd.length;  n++)   if (ch == checkAdd.charAt(n))   break;   if (n == checkAdd.length)        {   allValidAdd = false;   break;   }  }  if (!allValidAdd)    {   alert("Please enter valid Address");   address.focus();   address.select();   return false;  }

}

Notice the long list of alphabets, numbers & symbols? The web page is checking the address entered against this list of characters and if it finds anything outside of this list like a & or a \ it throws an error. I was using a & in my address and hence the error.

Stupid! First of all this is a completely unnecessary check. Secondly the character set is English and hence cannot handle other languages. Lastly the set is restrictive. Both & and \ are commonly used in addresses.

Another example of sub standard programming from a banking web site. And that is a frightening thought.

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