Citibank - Faster Payments

Stompa

chexum wrote: »

Well, it looks like payments below £500 work instantly, but up to £500 a day, everything above that, even if to other accounts, is asking me to confirm a "date change" to a working day later.

And as far as I can see, anything above £10k can't be done online, you have to phone them. I wonder what the 'date change' is supposed to achieve (other than letting them hang on to the money for an extra day)? The whole system is a mess.

olga_c

hi all,

i wish i had found this thread sooner and known not to even send anything to citibank. that being said, this january i did send several FPS to and from citibank, all for small amounts, and it always worked.

so i had no reason to know any better.

on the evening of friday March 30th, I transferred £533 from my account at nationwide to my account at citibank. the payment details were re-used from a previous payment in january. it left nationwide and i got a green confirmation screen. then i logged in to citibank and saw that the payment WAS there. the balance showed £533 and so did the available balance -- except with effective date 02/04 (the nearest business day).

on 02/04 monday i decided to log into citibank again, and noticed that there were some issues with me seeing my transaction history for the account. every time i pressed that, i had either blank screen or error message. i called their telephone banking and they said they had technical issues. the balance on the first screen did however show the £533 being there.

on Tuesday 03/04, instead of posting on monday as it should have, the money disappeared from my account as if it had never been there. it never was property credited and now on my statement or anywhere, there is no mention that this payment existed at all. citibank refuses to even look for it, as I can't prove to them that it ever existed. It seems like it is my word against theirs, and they take a general view that I am imagining things.

I feel like a total idiot.

Nationwide, in turn, refuses to give me any sort of transaction number or confirmation number or anything at all that I could reference in order to convince Citi to start looking for my money. This was pretty much all my money and I badly needed it, so I am totally devastated.

Nationwide promised to put a forward trace but they didnt sound too sure. They also say the money didn't come back and they can;t see any reason anything could be wrong with it.

what on earth do i do now? I now see that several people here have had the same problem, but they rarely come back to post how it ended. i can only assume they got their money, or died trying.

can someone who had similar experience tell me what i can expect to happen and in what timeframe, based on prior experience with Citi? It has now been 4 working days.

Doc_N

olga_c wrote: »

can someone who had similar experience tell me what i can expect to happen and in what timeframe, based on prior experience with Citi? It has now been 4 working days.

My experiences with Citibank have been uniformly awful.

They seem to put a maximum of £500 a day on ALL Faster Payments out of an account (but don't tell you that anywhere), and getting replies out of them via their online message system is slow, tortuous and ineffective.

The only thing that seems to work is to make a complaint to them, and insist that it's dealt with formally. Make it quite clear that you want it handled at such a level that you can refer it to the Financial Ombudsman Service if you're still not happy with the final response.

That seems to work, but nothing seems to shake up their appalling handling of Faster Payments - they just give excuse after excuse, and do nothing at all.

Citibank is a bank that's best avoided - it's even worse than Santander, and that's saying something! They haven't got a clue how to run a banking operation, and why anybody chooses to bank with them I have no idea. For me, it's only the extras that go with the account that make it worth keeping open, but I use it as little as possible, just putting the minimum in each month to keep it fee-free, and then moving it straight out again.

I'd advise anyone to ditch it immediately and move to First Direct, where they do know how to run a bank, and they do understand customer service.

olga_c

Doc_N wrote: »

My experiences with Citibank have been uniformly awful.

They seem to put a maximum of £500 a day on ALL Faster Payments out of an account (but don't tell you that anywhere), and getting replies out of them via their online message system is slow, tortuous and ineffective.

The only thing that seems to work is to make a complaint to them, and insist that it's dealt with formally. Make it quite clear that you want it handled at such a level that you can refer it to the Financial Ombudsman Service if you're still not happy with the final response.

That seems to work, but nothing seems to shake up their appalling handling of Faster Payments - they just give excuse after excuse, and do nothing at all.

Citibank is a bank that's best avoided - it's even worse than Santander, and that's saying something! They haven't got a clue how to run a banking operation, and why anybody chooses to bank with them I have no idea. For me, it's only the extras that go with the account that make it worth keeping open, but I use it as little as possible, just putting the minimum in each month to keep it fee-free, and then moving it straight out again.

I'd advise anyone to ditch it immediately and move to First Direct, where they do know how to run a bank, and they do understand customer service.

thanks, you are preaching to the choir -- i will certainly not ever use them for anything again. the reason people do, i think, is that I personally have used Citibank for 6 years in another country as my main account and never had a problem. a familiar logo drew me there. but of course it's a totally independent operation in the UK.

however, at this time I do not want to improve their handling of faster payments, i just want my money back this one time.

this was not an outgoing, but an incoming faster payment that has disappeared -- after sitting for 72 hours on the account.It;s gott to be somewhere!

I want to know what happened to others who had similar experience -- I know some people in similar situations report that missing payments eventually just turn up.

The reason I can't drive down to Hanover square and deal with it decisively, is that I am currently in the United States, and I think Citibank realized that it makes me weak and easy to disregard.

olga_c

just to update on my case, after some screaming the money did turn up in citibank, exactly a week later. it was posted with a business date 05/04 (so I could see in on 06/04) and a note -- right there on a statement line -- that it was a "faster payment value date 30/03".

i met these good news by transferring just under £500 (having now read the forum) out of it for good immediately

Stompa

Out of curiousity, has anybody tried circumventing the online FP limit by making two payements (e.g. £8000 + £8000) to the same destination account on the same day? Does it work? Or maybe the second payment simply replaces the first?

Doc_N

Stompa wrote: »

Out of curiousity, has anybody tried circumventing the online FP limit by making two payements (e.g. £8000 + £8000) to the same destination account on the same day? Does it work? Or maybe the second payment simply replaces the first?

£8000? If only! The maximum you can send is £500 in any one day - and that's across any number of accounts receiving payment, any number of payments.

Stompa

Doc_N wrote: »

£8000? If only! The maximum you can send is £500 in any one day - and that's across any number of accounts receiving payment, any number of payments.

Sorry, I didn't phrase that very well. I meant in those cases when you make a payment between £500 & £10k and it defers the payment until the next day.

chexum

Doc_N wrote: »

£8000? If only! The maximum you can send is £500 in any one day - and that's across any number of accounts receiving payment, any number of payments.

You can make faster payments over £500, but only if you call them. Silly. I'm not sure of the limit then, though. There are more bad news for the fx accounts though - looking for the best topic to post it in.

Doc_N

It's actually even worse than we thought.

The £500 a day total for Faster Payments isn't even a daily maximum - that £500 now has to last over several days when there are Bank Holidays.

My last Faster Payment out was on 2 June, and it hasn't allowed any more Faster Payments since then. Presumably the next possible online Faster Payment will be on Wednesday 6 June!

Some bank this is!