I read a news story in early 2006 about Citibank trying to getting into the online banking market by offering high saving accounts and interest checking. A spokesperson for Citibank said they planned to be a major player in the online banking field by paying top savings rates. I was using NetBank at the time and I was looking for a new account because their saving account rates were no longer in the top tier. I have had a Citibank Credit Card for years and have been very happy with them so I decided to give them a shot.

Citibank was offering a new eSavings account that had to be linked to a checking account. So I moved both my checking and savings account to Citibank. The eSaving account was paying 5% and I opened up an interest checking account that was paying around 1%.

Strike One Everything was going well the site was easy enough to use and then they lowered the eSavings rate to 4.75%. Not long after that they lower the rate again to 4.5%. This was at a time when most of the other top online savings account were paying 5%. I am not too thrilled with Citibank.

Strike Two I notice they are offer a 6 month CD that is paying 5% so I decided to move most of my saving to a CD. I entered the transfer from my saving to the CD online. To make a long story short the money never made to the CD and it took a few weeks to get this resolved with customer service. I finally decided I didn't want the hassle of getting the CD.

Strike Three While I was messing around with customer service about the CD, Citibank comes out with a new saving account called Ultimate Savings that is paying 5%. You would think Citibank would send an email or contact me through my bank my online account to let me know about the account. Not once did anyone at Citibank contact me or tell me about this new account even when I was going through customer service issues.

That was the final straw, I closed out my Citibank account. I searched BankRate for a new account and have opened a checking and savings account with EverBank. EverBank currently has a promotional rate of 6% on checking and savings accounts. The rates after the promotion will be 3.45% for checking and 4.89 for savings. I have also opened a saving account with FNBO Direct which has a promotional rate of 6% until 9/28/07. The rate at FNBO Direct before the promotion was 5.25%. Happy banking.

The Div Guy unfortunately owns shares of Citigroup which runs Citibank.