Could it be made easier... Review on Citibank

I appreciate Raags comments on “CITIBANK Suvidha” and other products and I have some of my own comments about their services.

What he said was right... To me some products of Citibank India seems nice... Others suck.

Good Aspects:

1. The good thing about Citibank India is the freedom to use the ATM card anywhere without adding surcharges.

   
   




2. There are also promotions, but mostly for suvidha customers. NRI customers don’t get them. But I will still add them as positive points.

   
   




3. There are some things that you can get staying at home, like drafts, checks, cards etc. You can do it on the Internet.

   
   




4. ACCOUNT OPENING IS CUSTOMER FRIENDLY

   
   

At Home service if you request. Excellent service I should say...

I have had a Suvidha account in India and now I have an NRI account. I m on the verge of closing it soon.

Reasons:

1. WORST CUSTOMER SERVICE FOR NRI CUSTOMERS.

If I have to make an investigation about my account in India a customer service representative will ask you to contact Indian office for account inquiries. Of-course the booklet promises support in couple of foreign countries including USA.

1. THIS IS HOW A CUSTOMER IS TREATED.

E-mail INDIA and they will respond to you. That takes 3 days at-least. What number am I on the waiting list?

1. CAN I TALK TO A REPRESENTATIVE?

Sure you can! But have never been able to answer my questions or solve my problems.

1. WHAT HAPPENED TO ME AFTER I OPENED THE ACCOUNT.

At the time of opening an account you are supposed to deposit a minimum balance amount. And give a check for the amount they asked for. The account was open. Everything was nice and fine, Never checked my account, two months later there was a $10 debit by citibank. Again I started e-mail correspondences. After a long investigation I got a reply saying that I have to maintain a minimum balance of $1000 or they would deduct $10 though when I opened an account it was meant to be $500. The basic criteria citibank employs here to open an account is fund the account with minimum balance or applications will not be taken.

I was pissed, I could not talk to anyone and all I could do is to wait for an e-mail response.

When I called up customer service in US they told me send e-mail and they will look into it.

And finally the amount was credited back to my account. Did that solve the problem? No. Next month there was another debit, and moreover at that time by balance was over $1000. Again I sent e-mail, Now its two months. I have received 2 mails from citibank that they had rolled back this transaction. I haven’t seen that in my account so far. There is only one rollback for the previous transaction. They mailed me confirming the second one. As a customer don't I want to see my money in my account? How can I trust a bank even if it were a fortune 1, if I don’t see my money in my account?

1. IS THERE A SOFTWARE PROBLEM?

I was told by a customer representative in the US that their banking software simply deducts that money from accounts that don’t maintain $1000 in their account. My question to him was just this…am I supposed to fix your damn software problem?

1. IS IT SECURE?

I do not trust citibanks security at least the NRI account. Believe me its true, worst thing I have experienced in my life in online banking I entered my card number and password and it took me elsewhere to some other account. I closed that immediately and logged in again. It took 3 attempts to log back in to my account. They used to talk about 128-bit encryption when IE supported only 40-bit encryption.

1. Are their For-ex rates good?

No. Their bid rates are one of the lowest in the market for Indian currency. Most other banks, State bank of India, ICICI (Which is very good and I recommend).

1. The most annoying thing other than those I have mentioned?

Speed. Like a SNAIL.