Before entering my review for CitiBank, I decided to have a read on some of the reviews already entered and really felt the pain and agony of the people having tough time with various banks. What I feel is that its not the brand but the functionality of the Credit card companies which gives pain to all of us. One has to be smart enough not to get fooled by them. For everybody’s information, credit card companies have a way of operating which is called banking with anticipation. They always anticipate that out of 100 late-payment fees applied by them, 50% of the people would pay it without uttering a word. 25% of the people would like to argue with the bank but would’t bother to follow up. Rest 25%, who bother much, would like to pursue the matter till the late payment fee (or any other wrong fee) is waived off. You see, in this process they get to make money from 75% of the people. This process works fine with all type of cases. Banks tend to charge you first and then anticipate that you might or might not follow it up. If you don’t , they make money. But if you do, they try to fool you with terms and conditions.I got myself a Citibank CC in year 2000 thru a sales rep. (yea, the same ubiquitous on-ur-office-gate sales rep). In those times, the credit card wasn’t free. They used to charge 1500 bucks for the primary card and 750 bucks for addition. This was free for the first year, so I thought, I would take the cards, use their service for one year and then get it cancelled. To my good luck, the card became life-time free from next year onwards after I called the bank and told them that I am getting another free credit card from another bank and I want Citi CC to be cancelled. You see, thats the way these banks work.
You have to get your things done by bending the finger. After this I was outside india for almost 3 yrs and I used Citi’s CC only for security purpose when renting a car or something of that sort. What happens in such case is that rental agency would take out the security money from your credit card and when you return the vehicle, they put the money back. So thats how I kept my CC alive for 3 years. Oh yea, I took liberty of taking out 20 dollars from the ATM once, just to check it works or not ;-)
Once, I was back in india, I immediately felt the need of increase in credit limit. Afterall 25K was nothing. Bank happily increased it to 50K but beyond that they wanted me to submit my salary stub. I told them that Citibank sales rep is giving me a free lifetime gold card with a credit limit of 110K. They said I can apply for same on phone and the existing silver card can be upgraded in my case. But they can’t increase the limit beyond 50K on a silver card. So I asked them to issue me a Gold card with a limit of 110K on primary and 50K on add-on. In all these times, I have made some late payments and got the late payment fee waived off just by making phone calls.
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For sure, I do not spend heavily using my credit card, but the bank has not given me any headache so far. I must say I am lucky, and nothing else. Lastly, I don’t think I should be reccomending this card. I would say go by your instinct and use those gray cells.