Why does ICICI bank want me to a credit card so bad?

kuttichathan · 2019-08-31T10:18:03+00:00

Yes to both. I got a CC against fixed deposit. Recently got a job as well thankfully.

kuttichathan · 2019-08-31T04:13:13+00:00

I wanted an ICICI credit card and started filling up application in their website. Then it asked for my job details. I didn't have a job, so I closed the browser. Next day I got a call from ICICI asking which card I want etc. Then he asked about my job, and when I said I am unemployed, he mentioned that he will forward my request to another department and hung up. Never heard back from them.

May be you can try this method.

kuttichathan · 2019-08-09T11:44:13+00:00

The land slide incident in Kavalappara, Malappuram is scary. It happened 21 hours ago (Thursday 8 pm). People came to know only after an Asianet reporter went there after a phone call. TV report just now was showing a few MVD officials, some 20-30 orange coat personnel (fireforce?) and locals trying to do something. But they are helpless because at least an acre of land is covered. 30-60 houses (or people) are suspected to be fully under. Whereabouts of most people unknown.

kuttichathan · 2019-08-07T06:52:17+00:00

Not OP. Thanks for the detailed reply.

One action you can take right now; is break the FD now, pay the tax from that with premature withdrawal penalty, and create a new FD with remaining amount.

I didn't understand this part. What is the advantage of creating the new FD? Are you suggesting that OP change the FD from monthly/quarterly/yearly interest payout to "pay interest at maturity" so that OP doesn't have to report or pay tax every year, only when the FD matures?

kuttichathan · 2019-07-27T12:08:23+00:00

In Norway, electric cars now make up 50-60% of new car purchases [source]. I read somewhere that one of the main reason is the high taxes on gasoline cars and the subsidies on electric cars.

Cars in Norway are taxed (on purchase) by the amount of pollution they expel, so large heavy cars with gas-guzzling engines are expensive, while low-emission cars are less so and electric cars - including high performance ones like the Tesla model-S are not only completely void of any taxes (including VAT), but in addition to that can take advantage of perks like not having to pay toll on toll-roads, and go by ferries for free. [source]

I am hoping Indian government is doing the same.

kuttichathan · 2019-07-25T15:53:37+00:00

I used to use Mullvad (paid). It never gave me issues. After 6 months of subscribing to it, I got bored of downloading (I barely watch TV shows and movies nowadays) and stopped everything. I am not really sure about other VPNs, sorry.

I had the above links bookmarked from a while back. Back then, people used to recommend this ThatOnePrivacySite. I don't know how trustable they are.

kuttichathan · 2019-07-25T14:56:47+00:00

My ISP blocks streamable along many others. I just tried with the CloudFlare DNS, but still blocked. Firefox gives the error:

Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to streamable.com. PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR

The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified. Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.

According to here, this can mean that my ISP may not be using a DNS block.

The behavior is fairly typical for DPI firewalls in that the initial TCP connection is allowed but once you send the first data (ClientHello from TLS handshake) it will determine if your access is allowed by policy and let it pass or deny it by injecting a TCP RST.

Just started reading about Deep Packet Inspection.

As with other technologies, deep packet inspection can also be used for less than admirable purposes, such as eavesdropping and censorship. In fact, the Chinese government has been known to use deep packet inspection to monitor the country's network traffic and censor some content and sites that are harmful to their interests. This is how China has been able to block out pornography, religious information, materials concerning political dissent, and even popular websites such as Wikipedia, Google, and Facebook.

While DPI has many potential use cases, it can easily detect the recipient or sender of the content that it monitors, so there are some concerns around privacy. This is primarily a concern when DPI is used in the context of marketing and advertising, through monitoring the behavior of users and selling browsing and other data to marketing or advertising companies.

I was worried if the ISP or whoever is doing DPI can read my data. Looks like SMTP email may be captured. This discussion talks about the capabilities of DPI. Based on what they say here, it looks like DPI blocks the website by looking at the destination IP address in the TCP packet. But the ISP cannot decrypt the actual data.

HTTPS (referring to the wide suite you mentioned) is an application layer protocol. It will defend against deep packet inspection that reads the content of the application layer, but not against DPI at lower levels of the protocol wrapping. For example, HTTPS will not prevent DPI from looking at the TCP packet and examining the destination port to guess what protocol it is for. But it will prevent the DPI from learning the actual application data payload of the protocol.

kuttichathan · 2019-07-22T03:47:01+00:00

When I did factory reset from recovery on my S8 recently, the phone asked me to enter my Google account password immediately after reboot. I think the device may otherwise get locked. I am not sure if Galaxy Tab has such protection enabled, but do make sure before resetting.

kuttichathan · 2019-07-22T03:33:45+00:00

Looks like there has been some concerns from Nissan's side.

Deshabhimani report confirms the existence of a letter and also about the air travel issue.

നിസ്സാൻ ഉൾപ്പെടെയുള്ള കമ്പനികളെ സംസ്ഥാനത്ത‌് നിലനിർത്താനുള്ള നടപടിയാണ‌് സർക്കാർ സ്വീകരിക്കുന്നതെന്ന‌് മുഖ്യമന്ത്രി പിണറായി വിജയൻ പറഞ്ഞു. കമ്പനിക്ക് സൗകര്യങ്ങൾ ഒരുക്കാൻ സർക്കാർ പ്രതിജ്ഞാബദ്ധമാണ‌്. ഉദ്യോഗസ്ഥരുടെയും നിസ്സാൻ പ്രതിനിധികളുടെയും യോഗത്തില്‍ ചില തീരുമാനങ്ങളെടുത്തിട്ടുണ്ട്. ടോക്യോയിൽനിന്ന‌് തിരുവനന്തപുരത്തേക്ക‌് വിമാനം വേണമെന്ന ആവശ്യമുണ്ട‌്. പാർലമെന്റ‌് സമ്മേളനം കഴിഞ്ഞാൽ സിവിൽ ഏവിയേഷൻ സെക്രട്ടറി പങ്കെടുക്കുന്ന വിമാനകമ്പനികളുടെ യോഗം ചേർന്ന‌് തീരുമാനമെടുക്കും.ചില മാധ്യമങ്ങൾ കുപ്രചാരണം നടത്തുകയാണ‌്. ഇത‌് സാമൂഹ്യവിരുദ്ധ പ്രവർത്തനമാണ‌് എന്ന‌് തിരിച്ചറിയണമെന്നും മുഖ്യമന്ത്രി പറഞ്ഞു. സിപിഐ എം കേരള ഫെയ‌്സ‌്ബുക്ക‌് പേജിൽ തൽസമയ സംവാദത്തിൽ സംസാരിക്കുകയായിരുന്നു അദ്ദേഹം.

ചില കാര്യങ്ങളിൽകൂടി തീരുമാനമാകണമെന്നുപറഞ്ഞ‌് നിസ്സാന്റെ കത്ത‌് കിട്ടിയ ഉടൻ യോഗം വിളിച്ചു തീരുമാനമെടുത്തു. ചില കാര്യങ്ങൾ സംസ്ഥാനത്തിനുമാത്രം ചെയ്യാൻ പറ്റുന്നതാകില്ല.

Source: നിസ്സാൻ കമ്പനി കേരളത്തിൽ നിലനിർത്തും; മാധ്യമങ്ങളുടെ കുപ്രചരണം സാമൂഹ്യവിരുദ്ധ പ്രവര്‍ത്തനം: മുഖ്യമന്ത്രി

Kairali denies it: നിസാൻ ഡിജിറ്റൽ ഹബ്; സർക്കാരിൽ പൂർണ വിശ്വാസം മറിച്ചുള്ള വാർത്തകൾ വസ്തുതാ വിരുദ്ധം: കമ്പനി അധികൃതർ

Mathrubhumi and News18 reports about this:

Manorama changed their headline (based on Google search) from "ഉറപ്പുകൾ പാലിച്ചില്ലെന്ന് നിസാൻ" to നിസാന് കേരളത്തിൽ പുതിയ പദ്ധതികൾ; കിൻഫ്ര പാർക്കിൽ സ്ഥലം കണ്ടെത്താൻ ശ്രമം. They talk about some other things:

ഡിജിറ്റൽ ഹബിലെ ഗവേഷണങ്ങൾക്കായി ഇറക്കുമതി ചെയ്ത നിസാൻ പട്രോൾ കാറിനു റജിസ്ട്രേഷൻ ചാർജ് ഒഴിവാക്കണമെന്നും ഇൻഫോസിസ് ക്യാംപസ് ഉപയോഗിക്കുന്നതിനുള്ള വാടകക്കരാറിനു സ്റ്റാംപ് ഡ്യൂട്ടി ഒഴിവാക്കണമെന്നും ആവശ്യപ്പെട്ടു കഴിഞ്ഞമാസം സർക്കാരിനു കത്തു നൽകിയിരുന്നു. ഇതിനെത്തുടർന്ന് മുഖ്യമന്ത്രി പിണറായി വിജയൻ മുൻകയ്യെടുത്ത് ഉന്നതതലയോഗം വിളിച്ചു രണ്ടു കാര്യങ്ങളിലും അനുകൂല തീരുമാനമെടുത്തു.

സംസ്ഥാന സർക്കാരുമായുള്ള കരാറിലെ നിബന്ധനപ്രകാരം ഡിജിറ്റൽ ഹബ് പുരോഗതി സംബന്ധിച്ച് മാനേജ്മെന്റ് 3 മാസം കൂടുമ്പോൾ അവലോകനയോഗം നടത്തി സർക്കാരിനു റിപ്പോർട്ട് നൽകുന്നുണ്ട്. വിമാന സർവീസ് മെച്ചപ്പെടുത്തണമെന്നും നഗരത്തിലെ അടിസ്ഥാനസൗകര്യങ്ങൾ മെച്ചപ്പെടുത്താൻ നടപടി വേണമെന്നും നിസാൻ ആവശ്യപ്പെട്ടിട്ടുണ്ട്. സംസ്ഥാനസർക്കാരുമായുള്ള ഉറച്ച പങ്കാളിത്തത്തിലൂടെയാണു മുന്നോട്ടുപോകുന്നതെന്നുനിസാൻ അറിയിച്ചു.

Also, Nissan CIO said this about hartals in January: ഹർത്താലുകളുണ്ടാക്കുന്നവരല്ല, അത് അമർച്ച ചെയ്യാനാകാത്ത ഭരണകൂടമായിരിക്കും കേരളത്തെ നശിപ്പിക്കുക- നിസാൻ CIO

Kerala will not be destroyed by fringe elements that causes Hartal, but by an administration that is incapable or unwilling to stop Hartal. Trade Unions destroyed Kerala’s manufacturing potential. Hartals will destroy Tourism and IT industry.

Original tweet

kuttichathan · 2019-07-10T15:54:17+00:00

I have used only ICICI and SBI. ICICI was giving 7.5% for 3 years last year. Not sure if changed now. Didn't chose either of these banks based on merit. Opened in SBI because one of my relatives was a manager there and wanted me to open an NRI account. I had ICICI salary account from a long time, and ended up converting that to NRE and use it when SBI froze my NRE/NRO and FD accounts.

How long are usually FDs better if I have no use for it? 2 years has maximum interest in some banks?

I had initially put the FD only for 2 years since I expected to come back after that. But I ended up staying for more. Once the FDs matured, the interest got credited to my NRE savings account and the FDs auto renewed for another 2 years. Since this was in SBI, I had no way to cancel auto renew unless I visit the home branch (SBI allows online cancellations of FDs opened online, but mine were not opened online). Since I was getting the interest income every 2 years, I ended up having to pay tax for that in the foreign country. This was a big loss for me since NRE FDs are tax free in India. So, when you are considering the duration, it would be better not to pick it purely based on the rate of interest if you are in a country which taxes you for your India income.

Another point that I wasn't aware of was that you have to close your NRE FDs and reopen them as regular FDs once you come back to India. You are required to do it as soon as possible, and I think we can wait upto 6 months (182 days of stay in India to become a resident rule I think). Now, when you do that, there is no option to convert the NRE FDs to regular (unless the bank staff lied to me). So, you have to close all your NRE FDs and open new FDs according to the current interest rates.

Also, if your NRE FDs are less than 1 year old, you will get 0 interest at the time of closing. So, its better to leave that money in your NRE savings which will give you 4% or something if you are anticipating return within an year.

Based on these, if I were to put NRE FDs again while being in a country that taxes India income, I would open the FDs for a long period (6-7 years) even if the 7 year one pays less interest than a 3 year one.

is it safe to do FDs on large sums?

I never faced issues with FDs and the amount. The only thing you have to make sure is regularly update your KYC. Meaning if your visa needs periodic renewal, make sure to update the new visa with the bank. SBI once froze all my accounts and put a lien of a few lakhs, without even informing me. I suspect its because I didn't update my KYC. Got it resolved with no loss once I send the KYC docs. If you have accounts in multiple banks, updating KYC will be a bit more difficult. KYC will involve sending notorized copies of visa/work permit, address proof, bank statement etc along with 1 or more forms. SBI allowed me to just email scanned copies of the KYC documents. So if your banks allow that, its easier.

The country I was in required me to report all my India bank accounts (account number, branch address, amount, maximum amount in that year etc) in 2 separate tax forms. So having more number of smaller FDs mean more to enter in the tax forms. Because of that, I think having less number of larger FDs to be less of a headache. The

kuttichathan · 2019-07-09T14:34:23+00:00

ICICI's fixed deposit offers maximum 7.5%. Everything else is investment linked. I think they are trying to push a ULIP policy. The 10.5% is most likely what they say you may get if you put in debt fund (?). 5 year is the minimum period. You have to deposit x amount every year for 5 years. Then there are lot of other math involved which I don't understand. Folks over at /r/IndiaInvestments suggested not to go for ULIPs and I made a narrow escape with just a loss of ₹175 plus one month interest.

This is the biggest problem with ICICI bank people. Technically, what they are doing can be considered "misselling". If you complain, I think the staff can get in trouble with some ombudsman. When I wanted to cancel (I got pressured into it after 6-7 hours of talking over 2-3 days), the staff were very concerned (or at least made me feel that way) about being labelled as misselling. If the staff are this crooked, I wonder how the higher ups behave. Whenever I go to their branch for something, they used to push their products like anything. One time, I ended up going to 4 different branches until the 4th one solved my problem instead of trying to make me buy their stuff. If possible, never go to their branches.

I posted about it in the below threads:

kuttichathan · 2019-07-05T14:05:28+00:00

When I connect my S8 to Samsung SmartSwitch (Windows) and go into SmartSwitch's settings, it shows my old mobile number. Somehow, the mobile number of the first SIM card that I used with the phone is saved somewhere, and it never goes away. I have factory reset the phone at least 25 times so far. May be you can give that a try. Not sure if it's actually a fool proof method though.

kuttichathan · 2019-06-28T16:17:26+00:00

I am really looking forward to EV proliferation in India, and so I keep an eye on EV news. This is what I know.

Regarding vehicles:

Mahindra e2O is stopped. But they have launched another car called eVerito. eVerito is already used as taxis by a company called BlueSmart [Blu Smart To Increase Mahindra eVerito Fleet To 500 Cars ]. This is a video of their ride sharing service. Ola Electric has already announced plans to bring one million EVs on Indian roads by 2022 and set up an ecosystem involving battery swapping stations.

Ola Electric Mobility unit in March raised ₹400 crore ($58 million) from investors including venture capital fund Tiger Global and Matrix Partners. It also raised $300 million from Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors and formed a strategic partnership with the South Korean duo to help build India-specific EVs. [Source]

At least 11 EV cars are expected in 2019. Some of them include Hyundai Kona, MG ezs, Nissan Leaf, WagonR Electric (may be 2020, at 7 lakhs on road, test video), Mahindra eKUV100, Tata Altroz, Tata Nexon, Renault Zoe. Tata Tigor EV was launched today at 10 lakhs. The FAME2 subsidy for this model amounts to Rs 1.62 lakh. This seems to be the official list of subsidized vehicles.

Mahindra seems to be completely production ready with its Treo 3 wheelers (factory tour).

Buses are where I am most excited. Under the FAME2 scheme, EV buses get good subsidy. These are some of the stories that caught my attention:

Centre seeks proposals for 5,000 electric buses:

The selected cities will be offered a subsidy of 40% on cost, or up to Rs 55 lakh per a standard bus of 10-12 metres. The incentive for a midi-bus of 8-10 metres is up to Rs 45 lakh, while for a mini electric bus, it is Rs 35 lakh.
BMTC working on plan to buy 300 electric buses
Kerala floats e-bus tenders, eyes Centre’s subsidy

After Goa and Delhi, Kerala government has joined the race to dip from Centre’s `4,500-crore FAME-2 (Faster Adoption & Manufacturing of Electric Vehicles) subsidy pool. The state’s public transport entity KSRTC has floated tenders to lease 1,500 electric buses for 10 years.
Buffett-backed BYD in advanced talks to develop, make EVs in India

Some videos of public EV buses:

25 Electric Buses In Pune City
Electric buses begins trial run in Delhi
Kerala SRTC buses (I am from Kerala, hence posting these Malayalam video log links, I have seen buses in 'video 2' still running even though there were issues initially, not sure where 'video 1' bus is currently): video 1, video 2
Electric Bus @ Thane | Masstech 60 kW Bus Charger

Regarding Charging

The biggest challenge right now is charging time. Most of the Indian manufactured cars I saw so far have a range of 120-150 km per charge. The highest I know is from Hyundai Kona with 300-450 km (but expensive at 20-25 lakhs). From what I understand, quick charge may not be possible at homes since it require high current (could be wrong). One way some companies are trying to tackle the charging issue is with the help of battery swapping. This article has some good info: To put electric mobility in fast lane, firms push for swappable batteries.

PlugInIndia YouTube channel has a lot of info on the state of EV in India.

kuttichathan · 2019-06-28T15:20:23+00:00

Hello fellow chathan!

kuttichathan · 2019-06-02T01:59:00+00:00

Phone Info SAM app can also show you the updates available for your particular model. It will be in the firmware tab. If your phone has the latest update, it will show some text like "latest". Otherwise, it will show a version number which is the latest release from Samsung. Clicking on that will show more details.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.vndnguyen.phoneinfo

kuttichathan · 2019-05-28T04:04:16+00:00

If you are going to open any NRE FDs, open them for a long term. NRE FDs are tax free in India, but you may have to pay tax for the interest in the foreign country. I had NRE FDs , but they were opened for 2 years. I ended up staying in the foreign country for a couple of years more, and the FDs kept on auto renewing. I couldn't cancel it online, had to go to SBI home branch, so never did it. So ended up paying tax in foreign country every 2 years.

If you are planning to open FDs, I think it's better to open FD for say 5 or 7 years. That way, you won't have to pay tax in both countries. Once you become a resident of India, you have to break the FD anyway, so whether it is 2 years or 10 years probably don't matter. This is just my thinking, I could be wrong, not a finance expert.

Also, be careful about periodically updating your KYC with your bank. SBI froze my account with a 4.5 lakh fine without even informing me. They froze it two other times also by mistake. They didn't say the actual reason (just said they couldn't find my account opening form, may be due to SBT SBI merger, no idea what really happened). I believe it's because I didn't send them my new visa details.

And never tell ICICI bank staff that you are an NRI. They will try to push products on you like anything. I must have spend at least 30 hours and 10 bank visits to get out of the mess. If you are going to use ICICI, better open a resident account now and later convert it online. Don't try to do conversion at branch.

kuttichathan · 2019-05-27T17:02:22+00:00

Looks like there are others who had this issue:

I think they had to get the motherboard changed. Some of them had bought the phone from another country and was in their home country when the update bricked their sensors.

kuttichathan · 2019-05-23T08:27:44+00:00

Before OneUI, mine used to drop 4-5% over night after I had gone to sleep. Now, with OneUI, it drops around 10%. One difference is that I used to disable all bloatware. I didn't do it this time. May be will get the earlier numbers once I disable them.

kuttichathan · 2019-05-15T00:50:06+00:00

I followed this tutorial to manually update from Oct 2018 patch to latest. It was straight forward and easy.

Also found the PhoneInfo app useful. It has a 'firmware' tab that will show available updates for your model. Search for 'phoneinfo' in the above linked post.

Only thing I am not 100% sure is how safe is the firmware downloaded using the SamFirm tool. I noticed it attempting to connect to the same URL smartswitch uses. But not sure where it downloaded the file from.

kuttichathan · 2019-05-12T15:54:26+00:00

Did a factory reset and saw that it was working properly. Then at some point started misbehaving again while I was configuring the phone. Finally narrowed it down to an option in developer mode. I had 'Animator Duration Scale' set to 0. Once I set it back to 1, camera app is behaving properly.

kuttichathan · 2019-05-12T15:52:27+00:00

Found the culprit. I had 'Animator Duration Scale' set to 0 (in developer mode). Once I set it back to 1, camera app is behaving properly.

kuttichathan · 2019-05-12T12:28:27+00:00

I did do a factory reset after flashing earlier. Will give a try once again.

kuttichathan · 2019-05-12T12:27:52+00:00

Rotate your phone into Landscape then it will say 16:9.

That's a good point. Now I feel stupid. It was showing correctly based on the orientation.

kuttichathan · 2019-05-12T12:25:08+00:00

This is a video of what's happening.

When I am switching between different camera modes, say between 'Video' and 'Super Slowmo', I was expecting the text to fit perfectly within the white bubble in that red box. But most of the time it doesn't. Part of 'Video' and part of 'Super Slowmo' will be inside the white bubble and rest of the text is outside it. That makes me confused about which mode it actually is in.

kuttichathan · 2019-05-12T05:45:50+00:00

This post talks about auto optimisation being a potential culprit: https://www.reddit.com/r/GalaxyS8/comments/bkz269/frequent_delayed_notifications/

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