Hi,

I have an account with Citi Bank and am a customer of Citi Bank from more than an year. My (the then) employer Thomson allows me to have a salary account only with Citi Bank, Hyderabad Branch (read to know why). I am fine with that.

Whenever I call Citibank India I receive a very good response over phone but issue resolving quality is a bit poor.

I resigned Thomson and left to Canada due to aome unavoidable reasons and back home in the month of March. During my stay in Canada I was paying all my bills (credit cards, phone bills and other loans) online using online transfer facility with the banks I have accounts in.

I was expecting final settlement amount from Thomson and I noticed few bucks being credited in my Citi Bank account and these are credited by Thomson. Because the amount credited was much less than what I was expecting, I queried Thomson by sending an email to the HR department saying that I have received F & F (Full and Final) money from them and I requested a break-down of my F & F and have not received any reply from them.

When I logged on to my Citi Bank account to pay a couple of debts through online transfer, I noticed that my Citi Bank has zero balance and all the money I had was deducted by Citi Bank. Comments for the transaction are "Reversal of Salary amount which is credited erronously". I was greatly dissappointed as they have not sent me any communication regarding the adjustment and I was left with no funds during the last dates of the debts payment notice. End result being I had to take an another loan from a non registered money lender paying huge interest rate for the payment of bills which are on the neck.

I sent an email to Citi Bank asking what's the reason behind not informing me before or after deducting my account? I would have made necessory adjustments for the payment of my credit card and other bills. They replied my mail saying this was an erronous credit of Salary and they made an adjustment entry (where as, my request was regarding not informing me before or afterdeducting my account). I also received a lot or vague answers from them.

I am not bothered about money being debited from my account. My concern was they would have infromed me before or atleast after they passed this irresponsible adjustment, which is just and adjustment for them.

Upon my series of email I received a scanned copy of a Thomson letterhead where they requested them to deduct my account for the amount which is credited for salary by mistake. My reply was "did Thomson requested you to not to inform me before or after deducting my account? And if these kind of (so called) transactions can happen on a third party's (Thomson's) request then I have a couple of friends who owe me and have Citi Bank account. Will they deduct their account and credit mine if I provide necessory document proofs and back-ups to them, and that too without keeping them posted?" Reply was "no". Then why they did this with me?

Is this the advantage of having a Citi Bank Suvidha (Salary) account?

If you too have a Citi Bank Suvidha Account, please be prepared for these kind of shocks and customer care replies.

Have a pleasant day.

Syed Anwar.