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How to be Rude to Your Customer – a Citibank / Diners Club Special

We all have our war stories about poor customer service at banks (see Vinnie’s Process Angioplasty case) but the letter Citibank sent to my Mom sets a new record:

“In a recent review of your account, we noticed that it has been a long period of time since you last used your Diners Club Charge Card credit card. To help better manage your credit accounts, we have closed your account. “

Wow. This came about a month after replacement cards were mailed to her and myself, both of our cards having expired several month before, which she noticed while trying to use the card in Europe.   But that’s beyond the point, the truth of the matter is that she has not been a “good customer” for Diners, and neither have I, not using the card for a while.  (I am using other cards from Citi quite heavily though.)

If Citi / Diners make it a policy to get rid of inactive accounts, so be it – but could they not afford a warning first?  Simply telling a customer their account is now closed is outrageously rude.  

But it gets worse: what is this BS about “help better manage your credit accounts“?   Too many people in this country need help managing their credit, thankfully my Mom is not one of them.   Want to be rude, kick her out?  Have the b*lls to actually say that, no need to dress it up as “helping” her.  Doing this officially qualifies Citi / Diners as arrogant pr*cks.  So arrogant, I can’t believe anyone in Customer Service would have this attitude – unless Citi developed a special training program on how to be rude with customers.

 

Comments

  1. Anonymous says

    Hi Zoli, I had a similar problem and I wrote about it on my blog: http://www.sme-blog.com/?p=224. Good on you to publish this stuff, I will try hard to do the same, these businesses are ruthless.

  2. Anonymous says

    I got the same letter for one of my Citibank cards. Meanwhile, when I called to cancel an also-unused Chase card, the phone rep thanked me for having maintained an account for 10 years, and asked for permission to review recently introduced card benefits I might not be aware of.

  3. Anonymous says

    Have anybody checked out http://www.24sevenoffice.com. This is a truly webbased app, with all you need to run your business. They have integrated WebEx apps into their suite as well. This is as good as it gets. fully AJAX based…

  4. Anonymous says

    “Anonymous”, I wrote about them extensively. But what does it have to do with this post? As it stands, your comment is spam.

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