Thread: Hey Citi what happened to your promise not to raise interest out of the blue?

I know there have been blurbs about Citi raising credit card rates lately but I always thought "Sucks for them. Won't happen to me. I've had a Citi card for 12 years!"

Then today I get a letter in the mail telling me they are raising my interest rate from 9.99% to a minimum of 16.99% and maybe higher. What happened to that promise Citi made to congress for their bailout that they would no longer raise customers' interest whenever they felt like it? So much for oversight I guess!

On that note I'm done with Citi. (Hey Citi if you read this you've just lost a grade-A excellent credit customer of 12 years!)

Now I know with every credit card if the credit card company sends you a letter they are increasing your interest, you have the right to "opt out" and that would mean you basically stop the card and in turn it gives you the right to keep paying off the balance at the interest rate you previously agreed to. Should I do this? I really don't care about a closed account on my credit record. I have others and a flawless credit record so that's not reason enough not to close it.

Then the other option of course would be to do a balance transfer offer. If I was going to do that I should have done it long ago because I suppose 9.99% interest is not the cheapest out there anyway.

Also how is it that Citi can still afford to do 0% balance transfer offers on their credit cards but they can't afford to keep the interest rates the same for customers like me?

Of course these banks are lying their a...s off. They had good teachers:
Nixon - "I am NOT a crook".
Clinton - "I did NOT have *** with that woman".
Bush #1 - "Read my lips NO new taxes"
Bush #2 - Iraq does have WMDs

I'm not a fan of the big Wall Street banks.

Go with the smaller guys. They treat you better!

I decided to that a 0% balance transfer offer for 15 months on here instead of opting out and paying it off at the original rate. The interest didn't bother me as much as they would be reporting me using 100% of my credit line if I opted out and that wouldn't be good.

Well Citi has lost me as a customer and I'm sure once the dust has settled in this credit crisis we will see the big banks realizing what they've done by losing loyal customers who have switched to other options.