ICICI Prudential Life Insurance — icici pru elite life super plan, policy number[protected] need refund

Website:

www.iciciprulife.com

I purchased the Elite Super plan from ICICI Bank Mogappair branch in June 2017 without any prior information about the lock in period. In this policy, the very first thing the customer has to be informed is about this lock in period which unfortunately your agent from the bank was not even aware of.

Following is the sequence of events leading to my purchase of this policy –

1) I met with one Ms. Mercy in May and told her that we wanted to invest this as a onetime amount for a year in some good portfolio with decent returns in the short term
2) She recommended this policy and told us that this is a government bond with assured returns and better than any mutual funds however this turned out to incorrect based .
3) Since our intention is to just park this temporarily so that we could pre close part of our home loan, we asked about the time frame and she told that the amount can be withdrawn anytime after one year
4) Since this seems to be a better option than a FD, we opted for this plan and the documents reached my home. When read, the document stated that this is a yearly plan and I have to invest 200, 000 every year for 7 years ie., 14 lakhs
5) Since this was not what we discussed, I reached out to Ms. Mercy and told that I will never have any additional money to invest in this policy and that it is a short term arrangement
6) Ms. Mercy reiterated that it is good if we invest however since we don’t have funds, she asked us to ignore and just retain the initial amount and assured that we will get better benefits than mutual funds. When asked about the duration she again reiterated that we can take this out anytime however advised that it is better to stay invested for better returns
7) Since the response was satisfactory, we moved on until I received an email from “[protected]@iciciprulife.com” on December 13th stating that the 200, 000 due in June 2018 would be auto debited from my bank account. This prompted the alarm bells and we decided to reach out to the ICICI prudential office directly instead of Ms. Mercy who had completely misled us

Discussion at ICICI Prudential Office on 12/26:

1) We reached out to the ICICI prudential office in Anna Nagar on December 26th afternoon to link the Aadhaar number and also to check the process of closing this policy since our intention was to invest this lump sum amount and not to pay further as we have a home loan to cater
2) To our surprise the employee at ICIC Prudential office told us that we have an option not to pay and promptly got our approval to opt out of the ECS however told that the amount is locked and cannot be withdrawn until 5 years

I have been trying to explain that the actual policy was not explained by the bank agent who sold this product since our intent is to stay invested for a year max however when I was asked to pay yearly premiums checked with Mercy who suggested to ignore this.
If I have the funds to pay the yearly premium and have voluntarily chosen this policy why would I dispute after your email to pay premiums yearly? I would rather stay invested and reap the benefits.

This is big time cheating and you need to seriously look at the business from banks to decipher if customers are being cheated.

For those of you who are reading this, please stay away from this product unless you intend to invest for 7 years and moreover your money would be locked for 5 years and you can do nothing about this.

Tried responding with the proof that I have thrice and they kept repeating the same response with no resolution in sight. Will keep trying and let you guys know if there is a positive response.