CITIBANK UK, problems with ??

dudenstumpy

Is it just me, or are others being mistreated by Citibank ?. A year or so ago,
I opened, what I thought was a savings account. I did this partially to benefit from a £25 free credit from them. I subsequently found out that it was a current account and thought nothing of it and deposited approx. £50 of my money into it. Several months later, I tried ( via the internet ) to withdraw some money and couldn't get any of my £79 balance out.
I tried phoning the Citibank helplines but they wouldn't speak to me as I couldn't provide phone-banking passwords. I emailed them several times
to instruct them to close my account, and I got no reply. I eventually managed to get the bulk of my money out and left a balance of one pound. Around December 2006 I received a threatening letter from them saying that I owed them £49 pounds ( being a charge of £24 pounds that they said I owed them plus £25 for being overdrawn ) and threatening me with lawyers and
legal action. They disabled my internet account at this point also. I panicked and mistakingly paid the £49 pounds and instructed them to close my account
immediately. At the beginning of January I received a letter from them saying that I still owed them 79 pence. I immediately sent them a cheque, but mistaking entered the date as Jan 06 instead of 2007. They reurned the cheque and I immediately ( 8th January ) sent them a cheque for £2.79 instructing them , yet again, to close my account immediately and to keep the change. My Bank of Scotland cheque account tells me that Citibank have not yet presented the £2.79 cheque for cashing. I am afraid that they are delaying so that they can, yet again, extort £25 from me for being overdrawn. I have emailed the Financial Omsbudsman to complain. Any advice would be appreciated.

MoneyGirl_2

Do you have a statement proving that you had the £79 balance? If so then reclaim all the charges and your balance. Every penny. Speak to the FO as you've already done as you've obviously tried every avenue with the bank.

skidder01

I have been paying for a citibank plus account mainly for the travel insurance.Following several communications with the insurance company it has become clear that if you are taking any medication for a heart related illness you are not covered. I have cancelled my plus account.

afwone

I had a Citibank account account a few years back because of the advantage of having accounts denominated in both US$ and GB£. When I opened it I was thinking in terms of Citibank holding my main account for banking. However, I found that company was terrible to deal with, very poor customer service and after a year or so I ditched my account with them. I can't even remember all of the problems now, as I have moved on, but I remain wary of Citibank UK.

floatsy

I have had very poor experience with them over the last years. And now their phone lines seem down, anyone else with this problem ?

oharsk

I agree with everything that has been said about Citibank and their customer service. I have just recently had the misfortune of dealing with them when I called their Customer Service helpline to withdraw funds from my account. As I did not have my telephone PIN, I had to go through the usual round of security questions, all of which I answered correctly. I then asked Citibank to change my nominated account (this the single external account in which I am able to transfer funds) but they were unwilling to do so as I did not have my telephone pin. Why go through all the security questions to identify that I am the account holder and then decide I cannot request a change to the nominated account without my telephone pin?! Likewise, when I made the request to change the nominated account via their 'secure message' facility on internet banking, they also refused to do this as they said I should call their customer service helpline.

I am all for security online but their unhelpful attitude stinks. I am now in a situation where I need emergency access to the funds in my savings account and I have to wait until they send me a stupid PIN number, which will take 10 days to receive, in order for me to change where I want my money to be transferred to.:mad: IDIOTS!

slackinside

Funny cos it's not even 10 mins ago I've phoned their customer service, after keep on hold for roughly 30 mins, they were unhelpful and rude! The first thing I did was to write a complain and type "citibank" in the search field and found this thread...

albo2002

My recent experience with Citibank - and yes, they have the worst customer service out of every company I've ever dealt with:

My debit card expired in December (I didn't realise) and I logged on to my account on January 3 to discover I was blocked access.

I called up and was told I could not have access to the online account for another 5 to 7 working days (why?), at which point I would receive the new card as the old one must have been lost in the post. They would also send me a new PIN.

Two days later I got the PIN. On the 7th working day I still hadn't received the card, so I called Citibank to be told the card would 'definitely' arrive the following day.

So today the card still hadn't arrived. I called Citibank again and had to go through 10 minutes of security questions (because they wouldn't accept my telephone PIN because the card has expired(!)), and was told twice that I'd only been waiting 6 working days, meaning I had to twice point out that it would actually be a minimum of 9 working days til I received the card.

The Indian call centre guy simply read everything out from a script and refused to deal with my actual problem, and because of their poor customer service I've been effectively frozen out of my bank account for two weeks now. I must have asked why I'm not allowed access to my online account simply because my card has expired about 10 times, and was everytime met with 'you will receive your card within 5 to 7 working days' - it didn't remotely deal with my problem and the 7th working day was yesterday :mad:

alexx431

dear community

citibank uk have decided to double their commissions on their foreign currency exchange rates. that means that if until now citibank charged a comission of 2% now they charge 4%. so for example if when the exact exchange rate is pounds for dollars is 1.60 they used to give you 1.57 and now they will only give you 1.54 !!
so please join the community and send a secure message to citibank uk (sign in to internet banking then go to customer services then go to send a secure message and choose subject "statements" as that is what gets through the quickest) complaining about this as if they get enough complaints there is a massive chance they will reinstate the old better exchange rates. this is what their customer services informed me

so for a sample letter to write them


dear sir

I have been a customer for a long time. I have a complaint regarding your exchange rate from £ pounds uk to $ dollars.

I know that you change your rates every half an hour. but my question is that when I used to transfer over £ pounds I would get a compatibale exchange rate relative to other banks. usually it was half a penny from the market price. also when I sold dollars & bought pounds I would get a penny from the market price. so for example the rate to buy dollars would be 1.58 & at the same time the rate to sell dollars & buy pounds would be 1.60 So MY QUESTION IS WHY DID THE COSTS BECOME HIGHER SINCE NOW THE RATE HAS BECOME A 2 PENCE CHARGE SO NOW THE RATE TO BUY DOLLARS IS 1.56 AND AT THE SAME TIME THE RATE TO SELL DOLLARS & BUY POUNDS IS 1.62.

Citibank in the past offered exchange rates that definitely provided a nice comission to citibank and that was fair to the customers which was a perfect combination as citibank deserves to earn revenue from it's services. But now citibank has increased the exchange rate commission, this is taking advantage of the customers and unfair to them.
I therefore feel that citibank should go back to their old exchange rate which is both fair to the customer and still advantageous to citibank. I am sure customers will change to other banks which now stand at a better exchange rate such as close brothers or hsbc. Also customers mainly openend accounts at citibank to transfer money abroad, in effect exchanging the money for another currency and to increase the exchange rate commission WITHOUT EVEN NOTIFYING THEM is definitely not the correct path for a reputable bank as citibank who cares for their customers. Therefore this surely must be something incorrect so please change it back to the way it was.

Please pass this on to the uk department as I would like someone from the uk to reply.

thank you in advance

a valued customer