CitiBank’s “All-Electronic” Program Sure Involves a lot of Paper
Tip It!Awhile back my wife and switched our Citi Driver’s Edge and Dividend Platinum cards over to their “All-Electronic” program, such that we now receive our bills online. So why is it that Citi feels the need to mail us each a letter every single month telling us when our statement is available online?
Here’s a snippet of the text from the letter:
Your Citibank statement is now available at http://www.citicards.com/. This notification is part of the All-Electronic Program you enrolled in to receive your statements online only instead of in the mail.
So tell me… How exactly is that all electronic?
Published on May 11th, 2007 - 17 Comments
Filed under: Credit Cards
About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!
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17 Responses to “CitiBank’s “All-Electronic” Program Sure Involves a lot of Paper”
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May 11th, 2007 at 9:47 am
Someone at Citibank has a wicked sense of humor!
May 11th, 2007 at 9:52 am
These guys are fools… I keep getting these stupid letters too.
May 11th, 2007 at 9:53 am
Yeah! I noticed the same thing on my accounts.
May 11th, 2007 at 10:13 am
I bet this is the result of some corporate thinkheads (they never act alone) being concerned that the customer would be concerned about not receiving their monthly statement in the mail because the customer either forgot or too dumb to realise they have all-electronic accounts.
These customers would be calling the customer support lines which would have been more expensive for banks than simply mailing them notification letters with snail mail and real paper.
Sad, really.
May 11th, 2007 at 11:01 am
I’m willing to be that it’s a cover-your-ass move to avoid problems with statement notifications being flagged as spam. But then it doesn’t really have the desired effect, which is minimizing mailing costs (and as a side benefit, reducing paper waste). Sure, it costs less to mail a single page than an entire statement, but that’s just a fractional gain.
May 11th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
I don’t get any letter since I signed up for online statements. However, about every week I get the handy, dandy convenience checks. Good thing I bought a shredder.
May 11th, 2007 at 1:43 pm
I have not gotten those letters, but I’ve been enrolled in online statements for a really really long time (few years). But I do get those annoying convenience checks far more often then I care about.
May 11th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
That’s incredibly silly. When I got my credit union to stop mailing my statements, they sent me an email every month letting me know when the statement was available.
May 12th, 2007 at 12:37 am
I hate to say it, but Citibank just doesn’t seem that bright to me. I’ll be leaving them most likely when my intro offer is up in December.
May 12th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Yeah, I switched a long time ago. It was about 6 months before they stopped sending those letters. But, like Gigi said, I still get a few metric tons of convenience checks.
May 12th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
a quick call to customer service in india or kentucky or wherever you end up should stop both the convenience checks and the paper mail.
May 12th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
As an insider, the snail mail is indeed being sent because there is a problem with the delivery of the statement notification by email. If you contact the technical support number on their webpage, they will be able to tell if your statements are being returned as undeliverable and to provide assistance in getting your email program to recognize any email that is being sent by them. Also, a quick call can also stop any convenience checks or promotional offers from being sent. through USMail.
May 13th, 2007 at 2:24 am
I’m an insider as well. At the end of 2006, they sent out a memo about a intranet website we could visit to help post ideas on ways to save money. Since I have 2 CitiCards, I too get the “your statement is ready online” letter twice a month. I proposed that maybe they should stop sending out these letters if they really wanted to lower expenses. I know it may not be a lot but gotta start somewhere. I know my email address with them is up to date because I get other mail through it.
July 12th, 2007 at 3:00 am
I do see the security reason for sending a paper statement to confirm that yes, you don’t want paper statements any more, but sometimes, you have to wonder.
July 16th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Right said winner,the same thing happened to me.
July 31st, 2009 at 2:25 am
Are you guys really going to support Citigroup after they took $50 billion in tax payers money, and then RAISES EVERYONE’s base salaries by 50%? Not me. I withdrew over $300,000 with them this summer and put it in a local bank I like.
Rgds, RB
February 17th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
I too signed up for all electronic service, the only thing I get via snail mail is notices that my rate is going up and my limit down because the idiots at citi bank very conveniently forget to email that my statement is ready and payment due about once every 5 to 6 months– cut my limit from 10,000 to 1,000 and upped my rate from 7.99 to 11.24%. I did not get my statement or notification of payment due in July 09 or Dec 09 and didn’t think about it– I feel it is up to Citi to send statements in a timely manner, I believe it’s part of the agreement you enter into with them when signing up for electronic statements. I have paid off my account and will probably close it even after having the acct for 15 years.