It has now been over a week since Citibank raised interest rates on many of its most loyal customers and it seems as if no one in the media cares. This continues to shock me, as the number of visitors contacting me has not dwindled. And my concern that tens of thousands of customers have overlooked these letters and tossed them in the garbage is growing by the day.
I searched Google news a few moments ago expecting to see results from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times or USA Today. Nothing. And, since these are the only three papers anyone seems to read these days, that leads me to believe anyone who threw their rate increase notice in the mail will be in for a very big surprise when the new Citi interest rates take effect.
Ironically, the only mainstream news about Citi seems to focus on the fact that they cancelled a number of accounts last week without warning. I found articles about this on MSN.com as well as in the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Perhaps Citibank closed credit card accounts and sent rate increases hoping to distract the media with the less important, but headline grabbing story. Honestly, however, I just can’t understand why the people who tell us what is going on in the world are too busy to talk about this unprecedented event.
I wish I was a conspiracy theorist and I could spin a tale that justifies the absence of this story from the media. However, I think the real culprit is apathy. Apparently, the fleecing of American consumers had become so ho-hum that a boy floating away in a balloon (or at least a fake story about that) is all they really care about.
Unfortunately, we all need to fall back on the tried and true method of word of mouth-tell your friends, tell a stranger who pulls a Citi credit card out of his or her wallet at the supermarket. Tell whoever will listen. If you don’t, then a representative in India will be telling them about it in a few months. And that person will be told that 29.99% is the best rate available to them. Hopefully, they’ll be able to transfer that debt to a balance transfer credit card. But by then, a good rate may be 22.99%.
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