If you’re looking for a new bank, I would recommend staying as far away from Citibank as possible. Unfortunately, I did not have the luxury of choosing the bank for this particular card due to my employer, but perhaps the following story will save others who do have an opportunity.
Last Friday I was having a problem with a prepaid citibank card. I called the number on the back of the card and waited 5 minutes to be connected to a representative. This representative collected my account information and then hurridly murmured something unintelligible that sounded like she said she was having a problem with the system and asked if she could put me on hold. I was going to say “sure” (what else could I really say?), but the representative did not wait for a response. This at first didn’t bother me and I could wait five minutes. However, after 15 minutes on hold without any update, my patience ran dry. Since I was making this call from my iPhone I decided to dial the number again and switch back and forth between the two calls.
Tip: On my second call I found that just tapping the pound (#) sign a few dozen times caused the system to transfer me to talk to an operator.
After another 5 minute hold I was connected to a new representative on the second call. This new representative was unable to solve my problem, but my real qualm is with the representative, who after 15 minutes didn’t have the courtesy of transferring me to a different rep while she got her problem solved. The next best option would have been to put me back in the queue since it was relatively short, or at the very least provide a status update. In total, I was on hold for more than 20 minutes with the first rep without any update. I hung up when I was connected with the second rep and was describing my problem.
Repercussions
I’m generally a patient person and I understand when things go wrong, especially when it involves technology of any kind. However, I have extremely little tolerance for lack of communication. This inability to communicate properly has resulted in this negative story and a company that I will likely never consider for personal or business use in the future.
I hate the Citibank online service. It is very terrible. When I applied for paperless online, for Citibank to connect with billing companies, the online paperless is terribly useless. Citibank has a very terrible computerized system that does not function very well and properly. I, also, applied for receiving online statement, instead of the bank statement coming to me through the mail. I, still, receive bank statements in the mail, when I applied online for paperless bank statement. I gave up on Citibank and I switched back to my credit union.