Many people have reported this problem on BritishExpats.

The annoying thing is that I asked them time & time again if there would be any problems opening the account and transfering funds from the UK..now the account is frozen & I,m told to return at the start of April..what if I had no money?..i feel like going back in and raving about it but that's probably going to get me nowhere so ill have to wait and see..hope I am given my money back.

is this the card that you preload with rupees before leaving the UK?
if so, I seem to remember reading that it s only valid for 6 months

No it was just a normal account..rather it was an account intended for doing transfers from the uk to receive funds to live on,,which I think is fine perfectly legal..if it is only open 6 months or the duration of your visa,,,this they did not tell me at ICICI Bank

retiree wrote:

.if it is only open 6 months or the duration of your visa,,,this they did not tell me at ICICI Bank

This has been the case for many years, but as with so many other things in Goa has not been enforced until recently.

Bank managers didn't see fit to inform you for the above reason, plus they were getting brownie points for all the foreigners and their (hard) currency they were bringing in.

In the last twelve months there has been a clampdown, and a bit of a purge. Almost everyone I know has suffered from it and I am amazed this is the first time it has appeared on here......... Maybe most short-stay holidaymakers don't bother with bank accounts?

But on the other hand, I had the impression that plenty of members on here did, from previous threads?

On a positive, I haven't heard of anyone not getting their money.

Plenty of "jerking around" which is exactly what your "come back in April" sounds like, an extension of the pointless, irritating and unnecessary "come back tomorrow", so prevalent in Goa (and the rest of India). All it really means is, I can't be @rsed to deal with you now.

Many thanks for the reply..So I have been told to return April 2nd...which is the end of the financial year??
From what I can gather there was a short period of time I could of done something....bearing in mind I was not in Goa as I was re-newing my visa...when I asked the manager why had I not been contacted he told me that they had tried to call...which ok I cannot argue with as my indian phone was off a lot of the time..but there was no voicemail message..no sms message..why not email me I would be sure of getting that..why not go to my house and leave a message as they did when they wanted to verify I was who I said I was on opening the account..and when I was needed to do another transfer for someone to get a bonus!....I only found out when I went into the bank because my atm card and it rejected!..nice.. On opening the account which I was very dubious about doing anyway..i was not for-warned about anything like this..quite the opposite and infact told I could transfer unlimited funds! Fair to say I opened this account under false pretences really.

Thought it was only Axis Bank that was effected, we had to hand in the cheque and paying in books, credit and debit cards at the Candolim branch and was refunded all the funds we had paid in as cash in our hands

You should have had emails about the accounts last year, It seems some people had more trouble than others in getting their cash, only took us a couple of visits of about half hour, which for India was very quick

presumably you were refunded in Rupees.......which you are not allowed to remove from the country!
or were you able to get sterling?

Yes we was refunded in rupees but that is what we had paid in, certainly did not want sterling as we would have lost out big time due to the drop in the rupee value, the whole idea of the account was to be able to leave unspent rupees in a safe place to spend next visit also to transfer spending money from the UK when the Xrate was in our favour

meagain wrote:

Yes we was refunded in rupees but that is what we had paid in, certainly did not want sterling as we would have lost out big time due to the drop in the rupee value, the whole idea of the account was to be able to leave unspent rupees in a safe place to spend next visit also to transfer spending money from the UK when the Xrate was in our favour

As far as I understand you can still open an account and do this ..so long as you close it within 6 months..you can then open another account for a further 6 months! I am still waiting for my money and I received no email last year..infact I recieved no warning about this whatsoever from ICICI...I was simply told I could do "unlimited transfers" into the account!