HDFC bank preferred customer account - what is the catch?

About 100 INR a month for nearly no reason. Opt out of it.

I don't think that's true @green-knife-71366

What…never had a fee like that

What catch? You just get a RM, IIRC. You do get better rates on common banking transactions and you don't need to stand in lines at the bank (less useful since most things can be done online now) If you're really lucky, the RM is actually useful in day-to-day work and won't try to just peddle you investments. :-) It has been a long time ago that I became a preferred customer.

How do you check if you are on preferred customer account? Sounds useful I should get it too

When you login, it says your customer level on the top left corner. And the background of the web portal changes from blue(?) to golden, I think.

You both really mean the golden theme in place of the regular blue theme of NetBanking right?

I too never payed a dime for classic/privilege banking. Maybe in 2017 it was a thing, but I wasn't a customer back then.

Look for 100 INR debits.

@green-knife-71366 While I agree with Karthik's protest and HDFC's opt-out policy isn't praiseworthy, I have just checked 15 months of bank statements for charges less than 1000 and don't see any such monthly fees or annual fees. Perhaps like everything else, these too are negotiable or HDFC just stopped doing it at some point. From the article, if this was indeed a Rs. 400 annual charge, I would say I got more than my money's worth since they send a office boy with all the paperwork home for signatures and other stuff.

@helpful-gigabyte-47939 I'm aware of the benefits of having preferred account but what I can't figure out is how will HDFC Bank fuck me over for this. Apparently, I can have my family referred to as preferred customers and they can practically maintain 0 balance with all the benefits and no fees. I think all this is currently free because I have my salary account with them and once this changes they'll start charging me for preferred service?

@green-knife-71366 @adorable-furniture-84197 Preferred banking is run more like airline mileage tiers these days, IIUC. You need a certain amount of business with the bank (some combination of # of accounts, FDs, investments, monetary value) to keep the privilege. Otherwise you drop back to the previous tier. I wouldn't work extra hard to get into that program, but for ease of management my entire family banks at the same bank that makes me automatically eligible for that tier and everyone in the family gets the same benefits. I don't think there are currently any downsides except that you might potentially get more calls for investments 😉 but my RM stopped doing that in a month or two after being told NO in clear terms. And consolidating your business with one bank does get you non-tangible benefits like a RM, home banking, waiver of charges in case minimum balance not kept, offers for credit cards with better terms, getting preference on lockers, better pricing on common operations, better forex rates, etc. Details here.

Thanks for the detailed explanation 🙂

I've been with HDFC for 15+ years now. I had the "preferred" account for many many years before moving on to a "higher" layer. You get better forex rates, no IMPS charges, etc. If you get a insta-loan or something, your RM can waive off the charges. You can do things like clear a cheque without any money in the account, request statements but pay no charges, avail other HDFC without documentation or charges, and all that. It doesn't cost anything — just need to maintain a certain average quarterly balance. In a pre-pandemic world, it was even better.

@green-knife-71366 I check my statements regularly and find no such unwanted debits. 🙂 And even if they charge something of that sorts with my permission, the benefits far outweigh the costs. @helpful-gigabyte-47939 and @victorious-energy-56764 have already chimed very beautifully on the benefits. 👍🏼