Deceptive, sneaky, and oh, man, the FEES!
Written: Apr 17 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Low HELOC rate
Cons: Deceptive, possibly illegal, definitely shady business practices. Phone customer service staff barely speak English.
The Bottom Line: I feel their sneakiness and dishonesty borders on the criminal. I have told everyone I know to avoid this company like the plague.
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| dr_shrinker's Full Review: Citibank |
We got a HELOC from Citibank last year. Here is the letter I wrote the branch credit manager after several months:
November 11, 2007
To Whom It May Concern:
We are writing this letter to formally complain about the deceptive behavior of one of your employees, A--- B-----. We opened a home equity line of credit with him in March, 2007.
A--- intentionally withheld or misrepresented several key pieces of information from us in the process:
1) He never told us that he was opening a Citibank checking account in our name. Only after we received checks in the mail and called him did he inform us that he had opened the account because we had requested the 1/2% interest rate discount for direct payment from a checking account. When we signed the papers, we were only told that we had to have direct pay -- no one said it had to be from a Citibank account. We did not request this account, nor did we request the "Checking Plus" overdraft protection: he took it upon himself to set that up for us. I am not sure that is even legal! We were upset, but A--- repeatedly reassured us that there were no fees for the account. Since we would purportedly save money, we agreed to keep the account, just for the purpose of paying the HELOC.
2) Additionally, A--- enrolled us in something called "Women & Co," which we did not request. When we received a notice about them (whoever or whatever they are) potentially charging us fees, we angrily called to be removed. We still have no idea what "Women & Co" is.
3) A--- also opened a savings account without our consent. As with the checking account, though, he made it sound like a good deal. He verbally promised us a 4.5% interest rate on the Money Market account, which led us to close an existing savings account and move our money to Citibank. We learned immediately that the actual interest rate was only 2.47%, which was no improvement over our existing bank (with whom we were very satisfied). While A--- might try to explain the checking account mess as miscommunication, this was out-and-out deception.
4) In yesterday’s mail we saw that the "free" checking account A--- signed us up for was actually a "Citigold" account -- meaning that we would get socked with a $25 monthly fee, with no warning, beginning 6 months after he set up the account. Since he knew we would only use our checking account to pay the LOC, he knew that we would not come close to the $100k minimum balance required to avoid the fee. Evidently, he believed that after 6 months we wouldn't notice or do anything about checking account fees.
We never received any information about Citigold checking, overdraft protection, "Women & Co", or our Money Market account. In fact, we have no paperwork from Citibank at all other than our copy of the application and the subsequent statements. I believe that this was intentional, to hide the true fees and hassles that A--- had set up for us.
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The reason I'm here at epinions today, 5 months after that letter, is that we just got hit with another fee. $65 for the "AAdvantage Banking Card" -- that's right, they charge for an ATM card (because you can earn miles). We've never used these cards; in fact, we destroyed them upon receiving them because we ONLY use this checking account to pay our HELOC and didn't want to stuff our wallet with yet another card (or worse, lose it and risk losing $). Again, we NEVER signed up for this service, NEVER agreed to it, NEVER accepted this fee structure, NEVER used the card. They promised to reverse the fee; last time they promised that, it took 3 months to make it happen.
Oh, and BTW, we still have no documentation or information about our account...and we're still members of "Women & Co." despite multiple attempts to get out of it, whatever the hell it is...
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
dr_shrinker
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Reviews written: 3
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