Citibank - Ultimate Savings

Average Score:

•   A banking behemoth

  Citibank is clearly going through some major upheaval right now. The most recent news item I read in the WSJ talked about their intention to focus on retail and commercial banking, and shed all other units. If true, that means the retail (read consumer) banking will continue, and hopefully improve, because there are a few problems with it right now.

  First, although they have their own ACH, they have perhaps the most restrictive withdrawal limits of any system out there. The current max withdrawal limits are $2,000/day and $10,000/month - which is outrageously low. I'm not sure if these are just recently implemented caps to keep money from flowing out of Citi, or if this has always been the norm, but either way - it's bad.

  Second, the only way a beneficiary can be added to the account is through a branch visit. This seems wrong, but I asked the CSR twice, and he confirmed it.

  And finally, the customer service. Citi has almost $1 Trillion dollars on deposit. That's a lot of money, and that's a lot of money to service. When I called up and spoke with a CSR, although he was trying to be helpful, I had my doubts that he knew everything he should have.

  I would definitely take a wait-and-see approach with Citi.

  Posted by jpp -- March 19, 2009