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I debated about sharing this story with you but upon reflection it is a good example about what is missing in American banking today, commonsense and customer service.

A Citigroup news release out a few hours ago announced a new boss of the U.S. consumer retail banking operations.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup Inc is hiring Terri Dial, credited with reviving Lloyds TSB Group’s UK retail banking operations, to take over its flagging U.S. consumer business, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday.

dial.jpgDial will become Citigroup’s global head of consumer strategy, but the 58-year-old California native’s primary task will be to improve U.S. retail banking and consumer finance, the person said.

Lloyds shares dipped 2 percent in Friday trading in London on news of Dial’s departure.

Citi Chief Executive Vikram Pandit is reviewing the bank top-to-bottom to improve profitability and rejuvenate a stock that has fallen more than 50 percent in the last year.

I’ve been a Citibank customer for 18 years now. It’s not like there isn’t a history here. In my relationship with them there have been customer service highs but this past week has been an all time low.

I’m currently living in England but we are moving back home to the U.S. and flew back to the States recently and bought a house.

With the closing approaching I needed to wire money to the attorney. All that seems pretty straightforward but here is where it gets interesting.

Citibank has a daily limit on wire transfers that isn’t properly disclosed. The limit exists unless you have a Gold account with them which a bank employee told me only people with a combined daily balance of $100,000 a day are eligible for.

So to try to get the funds there in time for the closing I had to try to wire funds a day at a time but that didn’t work out. My transfer a day idea was foiled by confusing timing issues. Send a wire online on Tuesday but Citibank does not send it till Wednesday and that prevents another wire from being sent on Wednesday. So with each attempt I wond up being yet another day behind.

You Would Think

You would think in this day and age of modern banking and with Citibank being a global bank that there would be an easier way.

So after multiple calls with the wire department at Citibank asking about solutions, I was repeatedly told that the only way to send a single wire transfer was to physically walk into any U.S. branch. I explained that I’m in England and there isn’t one handy but why can’t I go into the branch in London, 3 hours away, and they can verify my identity and authorize the wire transfer. The answer, “Sorry, no.”

I called my Citibank branch office back in the U.S. and asked them for advice. “What can I do to solve this problem?” The answer again was that I could only make the transfer in person at a branch in the U.S. The good news they said was that it could be any branch. This is the same answer Pam and I both got from no less than 10 different Citibank staff members.

So since I was fighting a whopper of a chest infection (man flu x 10) that resulted from an innocent cold I picked up on my last flight back to the U.S., my lovely wife volunteered to make the trip back to America to do the wire transfer.

The Day of the Flight

Flight from the U.K. to the U.S. can be very expensive, but there are some deals to be had. One of the deals we found was on U.S. Airways but for the cheapest rate Pam was going to have to stay over from Thursday to Sunday. The least expensive route for us was to Philadelphia, where she could go into a branch and make the transfer in time for the house closing.

Thursday comes, we wake early, I drive her to the airport, we kiss good-bye, and off she goes, leaving me to cough alone.

After an eight hour flight Pam takes a cab straight from the airport to the nearest branch, walks in, explains why she’s there and is told, “You could have done this online, the people you spoke to just didn’t know what they were talking about.” Lovely. The branch manager at the Citibank office in Philly said “I’m going to have to write this down because nobody will believe this.” Well if she’s going to write it down, so am I.

So now Pam is sitting in a hotel in Philadelphia and we are out an international airline ticket, hotel expenses, cab fairs, and food for a wasted trip to the U.S. for something that could have been done online if just one of the multiple Citibank employees we talked to had known what to do.

Will a Change at Citibank Create a Change

So while Citibank and other banks try to shuffle the deck to improve profits and performance, may I humbly suggest that rather than invest in yet another fancy advertising campaign, tricky loan products, or yet another credit card, that you just focus on what matters most, good and accurate customer service.

If I somehow manage to get reimbursement for the expenses incurred due to this Citibank screwup, I’ll let you know. Don’t hold your breath.

By the way, it did make me laugh that the new Citibank head is relocating from London to the U.S. I just hope she doesn’t open an account with Citibank in London because from my recent experience, they just are not going to be much help. I can hear it now, “I’m sorry Ms. Dial, I know you are the new head of retail banking for Citibank in the U.S. but we still can’t help you.”

Terri, welcome to you new post but can you please invest in new training, rather than new slogans. Your customers deserve excellence, not punishment.

P.S. Maybe a name change is due for the bank this weekend? I’m thinking we change it to Shittybank.

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Steve

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