I have an account with ICICI Bank, Pune (salary account for my earlier Job) since last 4 years, with ABN AMRO, Chennai (Salary account for the exixting company ? but recently we shifted to CitiBank) & Bangalore since last 1.5 years & with CitiBank, Bangalore (salary account) since last 8 months. For each bank I have extensively used the ATM network & the Netbanking facility. So I am in a position to compare the services very well. I would like to mention some of my experiences with Citibank in Bangalore.
- ATM Network: It is no way comparable to ICICI?s excellent network. ABN makes it up by having a tie up with UTI / GTB bank network. In Citibank Indiranagar ATM Centre on CMH Road, there are 3 machines, but you will have a big queue in front of each machine & the notes are soiled in last 8 months I never got good notes there, I am scared if I get a torn note there is no way I can replace it like I do with a manual cashier / teller.
Most of the times there are no 500 Rs. notes & you discover that only after going near to the machine wasting your time in a long queue. There is one ATM in this centre which NEVER gives the paper slip of your transaction & it has not been fixed in last 8 months! The overall look & feel of the ATM centre is most dirty & looks like there are too many users & less capacity.
The most funny thing is you can not obtain any transaction information on the ATM (like your last 10 transactions etc) you must use one touch screen machine, which is a single machine there. It is broken most of the time & I have seen the same machine telling me that my card is not valid, but I can withdraw money from ATM using the same card! That touch screen machine is a joke. Also the way it is placed ? anyone can see you punching your Pin no. There is no privacy, any one can see (at least the person in the queue behind you) what is going on the screen. This is frustrating.
Netbanking: Although citi has more sophisticated looking user interface, it has some major problems like?
You don?t have a transaction password concept. There is no log in ID either, so it is less secure & you end up punching the 16 digit card no. most of the time. (they have an option to create the login ID to avoid punching 16 digit no. but that is a local option on your machine so if you go to some other PC you have to use the card no.)
The website is down significantly more number of the time, it is not at all scalable.
The downloaded statement format is also not user friendly.
For Netbanking my experience with ICICI & ABN is much better. The ABN web site is most user friendly, where as ICICI has the most functional web site.
- Biggest problem ? Citi Bloodsucker Attitude ? This is the part I hate most for Citi. Just to give you some examples to explain my point.
a. My Cheque got bounced one day, although I had made provision for the necessary funds, the funds that I credited & this cheque appeared on the same day for my account & the cheque was bounced. (No complaint about that ? its my mistake) All other banks (I have experience of ICICI & ABN both) normally call up the customer & give him some limit to deposit cash to avoid cheque bouncing. Citi never bothered to do that. I am ready to even live with this, but the next step they took really pissed me off. After few days I was given an automatic overdraft facility of 50K Rs. for my account & in future any cheque about to be bounced for lack of funds, this overdraft will get automatically get activated & I have to pay Rs. 500 for the activation charges & 28% interest.
This is really an indication of a bloodsucker attitude. I can even understand that but when I asked to take this facility off, they troubled me like hell. This is not acceptable at all. I am fed up. I called the citi banking officer, they told me that to cancel this facility I should call some toll free no. This is not accessible from a mobile or Touchtel phone. (I don?t have a BSNL phone either at my home or office). First of all they give me something that I have not asked for also it has an inconvenience that you have to watch your back all the time when you issue a cheque. This is irritating & when you ask them to take it off, they make it artificially difficult.
Overall Citi Bank problems I sum up
I feel like I am dealing with a cunning Robot who is always thinking about how to trick me & charge me more.
The infrastructure is so overloaded that it can not handle the load of more & more customers coming in.
It is a huge machine which does not care for its customers at all.