Citi Bank Customer Service is an Oxymoron

Citibank Customer Service is an oxymoron

Premium credit cards like Citi Bank Double Cash Back offer benefits such as you get to talk to a real live person who works somewhere in the United States, presumably, not overseas, and this individual is supposed to provide superior service. This means you call a phone number and a person answers the phone, not this automated crap that leaves you shouting into your phone: REPRESENTATIVE YOU FREAKIN’ MORON and eventually hanging up. And you generally need to pay extra for that service or obtain a premium card in order to get a person to answer the phone on a direct dial call, which is a whole other sorry state of affairs in itself or, as my husband likes to put it: Welcome to the 21st Century.

I have yet to use my premium double-cash-back Citi Card because I could not sign up for the account online and therefore could not link it to my accounting system. Oh, yes, I had my stinkin’ PIN number but I could not seem to get it registered, so I called Citi Bank. After much hoopla, the Citi Bank customer service representative informed me that I needed a new PIN number and the only way I could get a new PIN number was to go into the bank and pick it up or he could mail a new PIN to me. OK, Citi Bank can make me, as a Sacramento REALTOR, go into the bank to get a short sale approval letter from Citi Bank because, for some screwed-up reason, the bank is not allowed to email the letter outside of its screwed-up system, but it is not forcing me as an actual customer to physically drive to the bank, no way, Jose.

The bank mailed a new PIN to me, and I called Citi Bank Customer Service yesterday to set up my online account, as I was instructed because it’s complicated and it is linking all sorts of accounts together. The representative told me I needed to go to the bank and use my PIN number in order to activate it. What? I guess that’s why the previous PIN number did not work online. Because it had not been activated. He said I didn’t need to transfer funds, just go to the ATM, check my balance and voila, the PIN would be activated. What?

Is he smoking crack? First he reveals they didn’t need to mail the new PIN because I already possessed the power, and then he follows it up with I need to go the bank, which was not gonna happen. I don’t ordinarily scream at people on the phone. He received an earful of precisely how many pieces I was about to slice my card into and that I would cancel all of my other accounts as well and clear out funds.

He put me on hold. All of a sudden, he was able to link my accounts together. Isn’t it funny how that happens? If I treated a client like that, they’d boot me out the door. It’s infuriating, and I don’t know why more people aren’t hysterical. Why do people accept this kind of treatment? We’re just all minions. Products of committee decisions.?Digitized.

My first banking account was opened in 1969 with a friendly teller at Franklin Bank, a historic stone building on Franklin and Blaisdell in Minneapolis, which is now sadly some sort of government structure. A white-haired fellow ushered me to an oversized leather chair as I handed over my driver’s license and he opened my checking account . . . and man, those days are long gone. You kids get offa my lawn.

You want personalized service today you go to The Golden1. Which, as you may know, is now the name of our new downtown Kings Arena in Sacramento.