Citibank

I suppose it’s a little weird to write a review of a bank branch, since one doesn’t choose a bank for the quality of its branches. Nonetheless, I use this branch a lot and noticed that the negative reviews are from a long time ago. Whatever has happened since then has really improved this branch a lot. I’ve only received efficient, friendly service for the last few years here. This has included help changing types of bank accounts, getting ready to set up a small business account, and making timely transactions even when I have lost important cards and documents.
The staff here is culturally diverse. A lot of great folks from Latin America and Africa work here. I really applaud this branch for doing some good recruitment!

Ok, so my husband loves Citibank because of their great online banking and their customer service, so we decided to open a joint bank account here yesterday. It took us — and this is not exaggerated — a good TWO HOURS till they finally worked it out, even though my husband has already had a checking account there for more than 6 years. I just couldn’t believe it. Not enough that they insisted on address verifications, IDs, etc. etc. even though they should have all that information in their system, it also took the person serving us ridiculously long to enter this information. And after having gone through this lengthy process once, she then realized that she had entered the information wrongly, so we had to go all over again.
I completely understand if somebody is new and has some difficulties due to that, but it seemed to us that she just wasn’t listening — or why else did I have to tell her about 4 times that I am from Germany when my passport was in fact lying directly in front of her? Finally, she insisted that I had to sign a document which in fact misrepresented my visa status and we had to call the manager to get it sorted out because she just refused to listen to us.
Up until that point we had been pretty patient and nice, but too much is too much — she really got us boiling with anger.
Either their staff is incredibly badly trained (also reflected by the fact that she offered us some «benefits» in order to get us to sign up for a more expensive account which she, when asked what they actually implied, didn’t have a clue about), or she was just very incompetent (or both). I hate to talk about someone like that — after all, we all can have bad days and I actually found her quite nice when first talking to her, but his was truly the most annoying and time consuming experience I have ever had in a bank.
The only reason I don’t give it one star is because some of the other staff there seems to be much better (I have previously cashed checks there without any problems), and their internet banking is top. Especially for international customers like us, this is actually very important. But otherwise, forget it!

Normally i try not to late night Unilocal anyone for fear that i may be:
1. too harsh, and by the light of day will realize my mistake, but in the interim someone will see my rating and the good name of said place will be forever sullied
or
2. too nice, perhaps the alcohol will have soaked my brain a little deeper than i’d wanted and instead of giving honest feedback i will instead go home with someone that i would never have looked twice at whilst sober.
THAT SAID
i must further state that i am totally sober in this assessment, and in no way can i possibly be remotely harsh enough.
i’ve long held a citbank credit card and recently got an online saving account. i figured to make everything easier i’d just move my checking account there as well. so i enter into the brand new shiny (very shiny and very modern) branch in central sq, where manhattan used to be. after waiting around for like 5 – 10 minutes while all the people there chatted with themselves, never once carelessly glancing my way i finally just went up to one of them. that should have been my first clue.
the process was quick, much quicker than i would have liked, because about 10 minutes later i was out the door and on the red line. i got home and realized that i really had no clue what just happened. i had this funny new «atm» card that looked a whole hell of a lot more like my library card than i feel comfortable with. i have no clue if this is my only card, if i’m ever getting checks… oh wait there on that piece of paper tucked to the back that someone allegedly went over with me there’s a thing saying that… holy shit i’m being charged an obscene price for my checks…
honestly, i really could go on and on and on and on (you get the picture) here, but i won’t. suffice to say that i will be going in tomorrow to close this account because this was the worst customer service experience i’ve ever had (this includes many of the legendary bad service places littering harvard and central sq.)
open an account at your own risk!!!