Bank forced to return $700 million to its customers. Are you one of them?

In our Banking & Credit Card workshop we recommend that you maintain a healthy skepticism about banks.

Here’s a recent story that illustrates why we feel this way:

Citibank is being forced to return a total of $700 million to 8.8 million customers for illegal credit card practices. Citibank charged for “products” that didn’t do what they promised to do (like offer payment flexibility during hard times and protect against fraud and identity theft). The article I read did not use the word ‘scam’ but isn’t that what you call it when a company charges you for something that you’re not actually given? A fee of a whopping $14.95 was charged to customers who wanted to make same-day credit card payments (GEEZ!)

Citibank said in a statement that they do not offer these products, services, or charge this fee anymore but I did not see that they acknowledged any wrongdoing, offered an apology or pledged to do better in the future. Even though the $700 million that it has to return sounds like a lot, it is really just a teeny weeny drop in the bucket of their profits.

For these reasons, I don’t expect Citibank to change the way it does business. (It looks like only legislation can do that since no one seems willing to put any of these people in jail BUT that won’t happen until the banks stop purchasing our politicians… I could go on but I’ll stop this rant now except to say that we need to support the 28^th Amendment to get ‘big money’ out of politics…ok, really, now I’m done 😉

I am very weary of Citibank, but unfortunately they are not the only bank that does this kind of thing so we must pay attention. You will always catch these charges and fees (and possibly have them waived) if you do your monthly bank reconciliation (as taught in the Banking & Credit Card workshop.)

If you’re one of the lucky 8.8 million people to get something back, congrats! (well, sorta, because you had to get screwed first to get this money back :/ LOL)