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I have had two Citi cards for many years. I have never had any major problem I have had to try to resolve, and their nice USA call center is responsive and settles everything quickly and fairly. No junk mail. My two cards have excellent benefits---5% off on gas purchases at Shell, and 2% cash back on groceries and utilities and health care on the other. Straight cash, no tricks. No annual fees. No idea about their interest, they haven't made a penny off me yet.
As for absolutely free checking every bank offers it to seniors. Do you have a parent alive who can be a jointer? I absolutely refuse to do any business whatsoever with any bank whose world headquarters are not in the same county that I live in (or used to live in wne I opened the account). If I hear that they getting taken over by a bigger bank, Im in line at 9 am to be first person to close my account.
Texas banks have become real nazis about ID. I got my stimulus check last year, made out jointly, to my wife and me, They refused to accept it for deposit to my account unless it was endorsed by both of us AND I presented the drivers license of both of us for them to compare the signatures. I just put it in an envelope and mailed it to my bank in Michigan, the they deposited it no questions asked. I immediately closed my account at that bank, and opened a new one at another local bank, and they told me they would have done the same thing.
Texas has a BIG, BIG problem with illegals. I'm glad the banks want proof of who you are.
It's interesting to see how people feel about their bank. I think it's funny how we always wonder why banks charge such large. It's our money right? It's my Credit card! When we trust our funds in other hands like a bank, they encounter fees to move our money, higher people like you to deal with your request, spend time protecting and doing investigations when we the people misplace or are robbed. A credit card company has it a bit worse. Everyone seem to feel that the money on a CREDIT card is theirs. The would CREDIT says it all. It's not your money . Visa and MC pay their merchants up front. They patiently wait for your bill to be paid. We borrowed money that was on someone else s time. Does anyone ever take the time to ask where that money comes from? Do large banks just magically make it appear? NO! It's amazing that people are oblivious to the whole picture. We as people don't take responsibility for much of our own actions. Maybe we should not have to. We can just blame it on our bank who charged the Over the credit limit fee. I mean come on, we are all good clients. RIGHT! We never lie, we never make mistakes in our calculation. We are perfect. We should never be charged fees, nor should our credit cards. How dare the credit card company want to charge a percent on the money that is not mine that they paid for me upfront. It's amazing that people just can't take the time to understand. Imagine if every person had a zero % all year every year. Imagine if 100's of millions of credit card holders paid just one payment late. The bank is losing money on that one late payment X's 100 million. Ouch, that must suck for the banks. Are banks unethical sometimes? Sure, but it's run by people like you. People that go home and pay their bills too. It's a mess , passing the buck. Everyone does it. My venting session was not because of someone not paying a 400 fee. (even though the bank without the fee, will find another way to bill you.) This is not because everyone is out to Rob us. It's about accountability. If only 10% of folks would just admit there not perfect just once. We may have a better economic situation. We might not have to have a big brother evaluate our financial choices. What are we teaching our future generations? My mom use to have a box of mail. It collected for weeks. When a creditor called to say she forgot the bill, she got angry with them. She was mean. She would swear that their business practices were horrible. Tell the customer service reps, just how incompetent they were. I'm sure she made someone have a very bad day. It was always funny to me that she acted like that and the whole time her bill had been in a box for weeks. Poor customer service. No wonder they have attitudes. thanks for the venting opportunity.
It's interesting to see how people feel about their bank. I think it's funny how we always wonder why banks charge such large. It's our money right? It's my Credit card! When we trust our funds in other hands like a bank, they encounter fees to move our money, higher people like you to deal with your request, spend time protecting and doing investigations when we the people misplace or are robbed. A credit card company has it a bit worse. Everyone seem to feel that the money on a CREDIT card is theirs. The would CREDIT says it all. It's not your money . Visa and MC pay their merchants up front. They patiently wait for your bill to be paid. We borrowed money that was on someone else s time. Does anyone ever take the time to ask where that money comes from? Do large banks just magically make it appear? NO! It's amazing that people are oblivious to the whole picture. We as people don't take responsibilty for much of our own actions. Maybe we should not have to. We can just blame it on our bank who charged the Over the credit limit fee. I mean come on, we are all good clients. RIGHT! We never lie, we never make mistakes in our calculation. We are perfect. We should never be charged fees, nor should our credit cards. How dare the credit card company want to charge a percent on the money that is not mine that they paid for me upfront. It's amazing that people just can't take the time to understand. Imagine if every person had a zero % all year every year. Imagine if 100's of millions of credit card holders paid just one payment late. The bank is losing money on that one late payment X's 100 million. Ouch, that must suck for the banks. Are banks unethical sometimes? Sure, but it's run by people like you. People that go home and pay their bills too. It's a mess , passing the buck. Everyone does it. My venting session was not because of someone not paying a 400 fee. (even though the bank without the fee, will find another way to bill you.) This is not because everyone is out to Rob us. It's about accountability. If only 10% of folks would just admit there not perfect just once. We may have a better economic situation. We might not have to have a big brother evaluate our financial choices. What are we teaching our future generations? My mom use to have a box of mail. It collected for weeks. When a creditor called to say she forgot the bill, she got angry with them. She was mean. She would swear that their business practices were horrible. Tell the customer service reps, just how incompetent they were. I'm sure she made someone have a very bad day. It was always funny to me that she acted like that and the whole time her bill had been in a box for weeks. Poor customer service. No wonder they have attitudes. thanks for the venting opportunity.
Try saving the colors & all bold for quotes. It makes your post MUCH easier to read.
I have banked with Citi for over 10 years. I'm broadly happy with the service. I also like the fact that they have branches overseas which has helped me out on more than a few occasions.
Citi ended up antagonizing its best customers in the past year. Because they were very close to becoming insolvent.
So now, regardless of whether you have a FICO score of 350 or 800, you get the same credit card terms. Because their cost of doing business has gone up.
Maybe they will still become insolvent anyway. In spite of the $308 B government backstop.
Texas has a BIG, BIG problem with illegals. I'm glad the banks want proof of who you are.
Yeah, chased a "mobile check cashing" van out of my driveway last week.
Beat up old piece of crap with expired tags.
Was cashing checks for the illegals (er, ah I mean "unbanked-internationally-sourced-labor-staff") who work at the construction yard next door.
Refused to pull out of my driveway, and asked if he needed to call the police? I told him not to bother, and called them myself. He pulled out and drove around and parked back in front of my place.
If I had do-overs, I would have shot his van, first, and then called the cops. "Shoot first" is just the local custom and tradition. Where were my manners?
Next week I think I will set up my own Check Cashing Stand out front instead.
I'd like to update my stance on Citibank. I still say they're better than all of the big ones. But they've made some very poor decisions as of late which have forced me to make some tough choices.
I dropped Citigold only because I no longer benefited from the program. I don't get money orders or bank checks and if I do it's maybe once a year if that. People talked about sending wires; I had it twisted with ACH. But then again, that's what Western Union/Moneygram is for.
Citibank still has the best bill pay app possible, so my primary account stays with them, but I closed my inflow and outflow accounts and just opened a "rainy day" account with a small credit union that didn't have the credit check requirement. Problem is they also don't have very many branches, and the one closest to me doesn't take deposits at the ATM and doesn't do regular banking, only loans; so I'm still anti-credit union. But it'll do; I can always ACH money over to them from Citibank and that's 100% free even for non-Citigold.
Also, when they got rid of the Direct Deposit and Bill Pay waivers, that just killed my desire to keep accounts except for Bill Pay and debit card usage, because it nearly doubled the fee amounts. They want people to keep at least $1500 in the bank, which I'm sure makes the bank a lot of money, but as noted before, the interest rate is too low to make that practical for the customer, so I don't do it. I told them flat out that they had a choice: I'll keep paying Citigold but they need to waive all other fees period, or I'll just close and degrade accounts. To the guy's credit he did everything he could to try to cater to what I was asking but got overriden by Corporate. SO...I had to close stuff out. Got a call from the branch manager asking what was going on and I explained the situation; he wasn't happy about it but he understood my reasons. They're still good people to work with at the local branch, they're just subject to the corporate mentality.
Citi is right up there with GS and JPM and BofA making billions with trading on Wall Street using government money. I honestly don't know how or why any normal Joe would use them seeing the kind of greed and indifference they have for us.
I started to open an account with CitiBank in July. 2008, but then I had these problems with them so I closed the account.
Quote:
On July 29, 2008 I contacted your customer service number to request clarification regarding the APY for various account options I was considering applyin for on line. The person who took my call provided the information and offered to set up the accounts for me, which I accepted.
I requested the Ultimate Money Account with EZ Checking, which has no minimum balance required. I was told to call back in a few days to verify it had been processed.
I called back on August 1 to verify it was set up and get the account numbers and was told it was not set up and they could not provide account numbers until I returned a signature card. I should have been told about this on July 29.
I was scheduled to leave down for a vacation for the next week. The person I spoke to promised to mail me the signature card. It was mailed to me August 4, 2008. The first sentence in that unsigned letter says “For the past several days we have attempted to verify certain information in conjunction with the above referenced account(s)”.
I am not sure what you are implying here, no one has tried to contact me, I have not recieved any messages on my answering machine from Citibank or recieved anything else in the mail.
The letter goes on to say in the last paragraph. “If we do not hear from you within the next 14 days, we will consider that you are no longer interested in this account”.
I am very disatisfied with the way this process has been handled, and do not appreciate the tone of the letter. At this point I am no longer interested in opening an account with Citibank. This letter is to confirm that I am no longer interested in opening this account.
When I originally talked to customer service asking to open the accounts, I requested the Ultimate Money Account with EZ Checking, which has no minimum balance required. The person I spoke to tried to steer me towards a different savings account which did not pay as high an APY as the Ultimate Money Account that I was requesting. I insisted that I wanted the Ultimate Money Account, which pays 2.65% APY and has no minumum balance required.
When I called back on August 1 I was told that the account I had requested had been changed to an Everything Counts account. I was not sure what this was and had trouble finding it on the Citibank website. After reading about this online I was upset to find that it has a minimum balance requirement of $10,000. Which is not consistent with my plans, which may require the account balance to be below this amount at times.
I don’t understand why your staff thinks they have the right to change the account types a customer requests without discussing it with them for approval or verifying it mets thier needs. I found this offiensive. This combined with the other difficulties I have had setting up this account has resulted in my decision to take my business elsewhere.
I started to open an account with CitiBank in July. 2008, but then I had these problems with them so I closed the account.
That's good to know you decided to close out your account, seeing that you quite a laundry list of things they did wrong. Whatever happened to the days of the customer is always right?
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