I opend an account with Citibank about five years ago and since then I havent even thought about moving the account elsewhere. I previously had current account with Natwest and then Barclays and I had to close both the accounts within few months.
I went to the Citibank branch in Oxford street with all my details (passport, salary bills and so on ) and my account was opened straight away and made use of the free foreign currency service just prior to a trip to Italy. I have recommended Citibank to couple of my friends and they managed to open the account easily via postal application.
The telephonebanking is pretty straight forward and havent experienced any problems so far. Unlike some other banks, it is a free phone number and you can check the account balance, make bill payments and list of recent transactions without speaking to someone at the customer service. I dont use the telephone banking much nowadays as I prefer the internet banking.
The internet banking is free and very reliable and again you can do almost all the transactions this way.Also you can download the statement to Microsoft Money or Quicken for further use.
One of the additional service offered by citibank is something known as "personal reserve" . If you are eligible you are offered a personal reserve of about few thousand pounds and you can transfer the money to the current account at times of need and then pay back when you can afford. The interest is charged daily and also they take out a minimum amount everymonth to pay towards the personal reserve.I found this useful when I need extra cash just for a few weeks or months but the interest rates are a bit steep at about 14% (sorry I dont remember the exact figure)
The bank also provides an interest free overdraft of £500 which again is very helpful and unlike someother banks there is no charge for this service. As others have mentioned one can use the visa delta to draw cash from any cash till in UK and overseas for no additional charge.
Also if you have a cheque which needs to be sent to the bank , you have to send it with a pay in slip in an envelope (prepaid)and it usually reaches your account within two working days.The bank also pays good interest as well.
The only downside is that it doesnt have any branches in UK apart from two in London but I havent experienced any problems as a result.
I dont work for citibank and am just a very satisfied cutomer.
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Apr 8th, 2001
very helpful by (100%):
