Citibank's customer service

We have now, for almost 12 months, tried to receive some form of customer service from Citibank's Card Center. Basically, the problem was one of over payment made by Citibank to Satelindo, who had both double billed and mis-billed. But the Satelindo issue is not the reason for writing to The Jakarta Post.

In December 1997 and January 1998, we visited the Card Center in the Landmark building and lodged a written instruction not to make any further payments to Satelindo, but Citibank continued to make payments to Satelindo. In May, we wrote again to Citibank, advising them that we will pay all charges which we had incurred on the credit card and will cease to use this card facility. In that letter we pointed out that we had already made a written "Disputed Payment" application and by our reckoning Citibank actually owed us some Rp 250,000.

It was now December again and we have not received a single response to any of our letters and faxes, yet we receive every month new statements in which Citibank has accumulated bank charges and interest. We basically feel that the service by Citibank is grossly unprofessional and the level of customer service is zero. And because of this, we only wish that they would stop sending us billing statements, as we will no longer use their banking service.

In closing, we would like to also let readers know that Citibank has recovered some of the over-billed monies from Satelindo but this has never been credited to our card account.

We have extended an invitation to Citibank officers to visit our office on two occasions, to finalize this matter, but, again, this has been ignored by Citibank. Do they think that the business of banking is simply sending out monthly invoices? What happened to Customer Service? Let's hope that this letter will prompt some meaningful action on behalf of the bank.

LEO LEAROYD and SRI MAHASTI

Pelabuhan Ratu,

West Java