I am terribly disappointed with Citibank credit cards. This blog has chronicled my first credit card from BPI, then Citibank and finally Metrobank. So far, I’m satisfied with BPI and Metrobank. Unfortunately, there have been problems with Citibank. I mean no credit card is perfect. But this credit card takes the cake as the worst.

I’m okay with their expensive rates and average services, it’s their system and customer support that are problematic.

The problem started with my application for the cards. Back then, I didn’t think much of it as the agent who processed my application. I signed up for only one card but they sent me two. According to what I signed up for, it was supposed to be a no annual fee for life. When I got the two Citibank cards, I asked the agent again. He said it’s fine because both of the cards had no annual fee for life.

I mainly use the Citibank cards for emergency purchases and paying my bills. Lately, I posted about the balance transfer they offered me. Honestly, their offer was subpar. 12 months and interest rate of 0.49%. It was an okay offer.

One year later, I was shocked to find out that one of my cards got charged a whopping 3,500 annual membership fee! I called their customer support which is another problem. The options during the call has the one for talking to a customer support embedded deep. It took me 5 minutes to find it and another 7 minutes of call waiting. Now with all those time trying to place a call, the agent was standoffish and sounded like bored in answering my call. She spent only like 1 minute and ended my call. I got pissed and told them to cancel the card in question.

Her advice, pay off the outstanding balance and ignore the 3,500 because they’ll rescind it. VERY BAD ADVICE. What the system did was treat my payment and partially pay off the annual fee instead of paying off my outstanding balance. So what happened about 400 pesos was left from the annual fee plus the original outstanding balance of 3,000. Had to make another call for them to make good on their promise to get rid of that 3,500. Unfortunately again, by the time they wiped the annual fee, I got slapped with a penalty. It’s only about 200+ pesos but still it’s the principle of the thing.

And they did not cancel my card.

I just finished paying off the balance transfer but I refuse to spend another cent calling them but I may have to. And I don’t like it one bit.