I’ve been a Citibank customer for almost 6 years now - one
of the first Suvidha Customers, have a Silver International
Credit Card and took a home loan through Shelters.
Here’s how I would rate them (out of 10)
Innovative products--- 8.5
Technology Usage------ 9.0
Non-Intrusiveness----- 8.0
’Problems arisen’----- 7.5 (10 is no problem at all)
’Problems fixed’------ 9.0
Responsiveness(phone)- 9.5
Responsiveness(email)- 7.5
Systems/Processes----- 8.5
You can see - I’m a very satisfied customer overall.
Only gripe I’ve ever had is with Shelters’ service stds,
and they’re not Citibank per se but DSAs.
Suvidha, Home Credit were pioneering products when launched.
There have been glitches once in a while - but in Citibank’s
case - their people are empowered enough to fix things over
the phone (unlike HSBC who have dumb call centres).
Their ATM network was quite huge - way before ICICI expanded.
Inside Bangalore its quite great tho ICICI has a better
network if u’re out on the highway/smaller towns.
Citibank went online in a big way a long time ago. In fact
I’ve never been to a branch yet! You can do a whole lot of
stuff on the net.
Responsiveness over the phone is awesome. Twice I’ve needed
to chase the courier cos and they’ve done it to get the
(Citibank) stuff delivered home. They kept us informed
throughout.
Once I even got my credit limited raised instantaneously
for some big purchase - just by giving them a call.
Flexibilty:
They sent me 2 new (photo) cards cause they did not get my
first application soon enough and asked me to send it again.
On pointing out that this had happened - one charge (100/-)
was immediately reversed.
Great pluses:
* DDs are free online and in fact to most places they even
courier them for free
* Their Credit Card points work really well
* The cheque book, DD etc requests are met within a day.
* the online interface is great - though a little slow.
* Its been truly branch-free and 24 hours right from the
beginning.
the flip-side
My experience with Shelters, their home loan guys, was less
than great. The sales people did not know the product well
and over-promised. So despite it being a very useful deal
for certain scenarios, I was left with a bitter taste in the
mouth to begin with. (Since then though its been ok).
Also - the time when they quietly gave ’free’ insurance where
you would be charged after a while if u didn’t refuse - this
was a very ’US’ thing to do and not fair to customers. But
when there was some pressure from the press/customers,
they immediately stopped this and refunded whatever had been
charged.