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Citibank - Transfer of funds to India - Beware!
January 19, 2006
If you are planning to transfer a considerable amount of money (> $50,000) to India, please read below.
Citibank will ask for a lot of personal details including the following: Where you work, how long you have been working there, where you used to work before, how long you have been in US, the source of the funds you are transferring, the purpose of the funds, the place where you will be using these funds.
I find asking for this level of detail as invasion of my privacy. Citibank mentions that they need this information to supply to RBI (Reserve Bank of India). This is apparently needed for any sum above $50K.
If you are trying to transfer the money through check, you will not be able to cancel the transfer once you find it annoying that they are asking all these details. This is because Citibank has already converted the dollars into rupees. You will have to go through a tedious process of submitting a written application and stuff like that...
So in case you want to transfer a big sum of money to india, try to keep it below $50K. I am not sure what happens if you do 2 transfers each less than $50K, but collectively above $50K.
Comments:
firstname: GB019
lastname:
email: j............@yahoo.com
Citi NRI is the worst website ever built. For one the login is kinda goofy. You have a complex 16 digit login ID that you can mask with a user id. However your user id is mapped to your login id on each computer (Basically I can have as many user ids as I have computers.) You delete cookies and you are back to the drawing board. The password you gotta type in using your mouse using some goofy onscreen keyboard. Then you go to a cluttered screen with over 200 links. God help you if you want to find anything there. If you want support you have to send an email from the support link, however if you send an email from your mailbox you will never get a response. After a week or so somebody responds without reading your question. Keep in mind the response never appears in your mailbox (Your mailbox always shows empty). Once you go to the support link and see the inadequate message, you are required to respond to that message (They call is a query. I guess they think their employees are like databases you execute queries against). However make sure you don't click on any link before you respond; because once a message is read, it is automatically removed from the support link taking away any ability to respond
ACH transfers take from 3 weeks to 6 months (They take money out of your source bank account on the same or next day but take from weeks to sometimes 6 months to credit any information into your account).
The other scheme they have going on is they turn your account into an inactive / dormant status for inactivity (meaning moving money in or out of the account) thereby locking you out of your account and trapping any cash you have in your account. If you want your account to be operational, they ask you to physically go to a branch in California or to one of their offshore offices in India. If you don't you will not have access to your cash. By law they are required to notify you prior preventing you from giving you access to your account. They get around this by changing your account to an inactive status first which prevents you from transacting on your account (even though you can log in normally and look at your balance and stuff giving you an illusion of normalcy). After a further status of inactivity they change it to "Dormant" totally preventing you from having any access to your account.
Going to their exchange rate, they consistently give you 1-2Rs (2-4%) lower than market conversion rates. They make most or all of their profits from skimming off the top when compared to SBI and ICICI rates.
Finally in terms of support it is impossible to find a telephone number to their support desk. If you ever need to call CITI NRI Helpdesk their number is 800 248 4674
Overall CITI is a very unethical bank. The most unethical I've seen so far especially in their international dealings (US Regulators and guarantees have forced them to maintain a certain level of honesty and transparency in the US). Their website is the least user friendly of all websites and CITI NRI is the worst by far of any banking site. It's a mess
Thanks so much for posting the 800 number (1-800-248-4674 then 2 then 9) . I was able to call them. Their support staff as always was hopelessly helpless. My account was apparrently dormant when I initiated a transfer. They took the money out of my American Bank account but want me to physically go to a branch in India if I want to access the money. It is crazy.
Posted by liveit at January 19, 2006 9:39 PM