I banked with them for over a decade, with multiple credit cards, checking accounts, investments and home equity line of credit.
Service used to be great. This is until some genius at HQ decided that great savings could be obtained by Citibank by isolating the customers from the employees. Apparently, an analysis showed that Citibank employees 'waste' too much time taking care of their clients. Clients are a nuisance, in the mind of the corporate genius at Citibank.
It is almost impossible to get to talk with anyone that knows anything at Citibank. To start, they hide their phone numbers. Go to Citibank.com and try to find a local number for any branch. They are not listed.
When I found what appeared to be a local number for their Coral Springs, FL branch, I got into VR (Voice Response) hell. Several options are given for 'self-servicing' (aka: help yourself and don't interrupt us, we have better things to do that waste our time talking to our customers). You are asked to enter your account number 'to help our associates'. I did not call to 'help their associates' but to have the 'associates help me'!
Then a second menu of options is available, with none of them allowing you to actually speak with a human being. '0' will generate a response: "sorry, we did not understand your choice". Yes, they do understand that '0' means 'I want to talk to someone', but they don't want that.
After much frustration I got a person: in India. Quite far from my branch in Coral Springs. This person, taking enormous amount of (my) time being very polite, respectful, asking permission to do anything short of breathing while talking with me, very courteously indicated that she could not provide me with the local phone number to my branch. She does not have that information... believe that!
Of course, I was asked to repeat my account number, the same I had entered on the phone keypad a few minutes earlier.
So I asked to be transferred to the branch, beginning with the branch manger down the line to simply 'anybody' ('can you please get the janitor on the line?' included) but they all were busy talking with other customers...
I could not get connected with anyone at the branch, not even given their real phone number to call them directly.
I am sure Citibank is saving big time by keeping us, pesky customers, away from their employees who are busy at work.
I suggest an even better way of saving money for Citibank: shut the doors, close your operations and you won't have to spend another dime!
Pablo Vitaver.
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