OT: Citibank e-Savings (4.50% APY) and EZ Checking (0% APY)

My dad was just telling me that he tried to open one of these accounts at Citibank days ago and has gotten no response. Today he shot off an email asking about the status of his new account, no answer yet. So I anticipate I'll be hearing some first-hand news pretty soon. I'm wondering if the delay my dad is experiencing is due to (1) user error, (2) a deluge of people opening accounts, or (3) something I haven't thought of. ;-)

I've been very happy with my Emigrant Direct account (pays 4.5% too), just added an Emigrant Direct rewards card for those non-gas, non-grocery, non-pharmacy purchases that would normally go on my Citi Dividends card. (IIRC, the ED CC pays up to ~1.45% and deposits to my ED savings every 6 mos.) Even though I don't have Quicken Direct Connect on these two accounts, I get more $$, so for me, it's worth the trade. All my other accounts have DC, and my Emigrant Direct savings account doesn't see much activity, so manually dealing with the Emigrant CC is not a big deal, IMO anyway. :-)

Regards,

Margaret

I opened several (the kids have them too) of these online and got nearly instantaneous email confirmation of the accounts. However, I already had Citibank accounts (including checking) and online access. The accounts showed up immediately in the online access (not Quicken) and were active.

I had to request Direct Connect (via Quicken email) be added to these accounts, which was generally successful (it still doesn't work for one of the accounts and I still don't know why).

One nice thing about these accounts is there is no minimum balance and the interest rate is not a function of the balance, unlike other Citibank money market accounts.

Peter

Peter:

If I may ask, how many Citi accounts are you trying to set up for Direct Connect?

I have found that if I try to download more than 2 Citi credit cards from one ID, the 3rd one does not work.

So, I deactivate the ones I don't currently use.

Thanks, Bob

Bob,

Are you talking about Citibank banking accounts or credit card accounts?

I have 13 bank accounts that work through direct connect. They don't seem to even shut off closed accounts so if there is some limit, I will eventually hit it.

I have 2 Citicard accounts. However, each has it's own ID. I don't think I was able to set up one ID for both, but I'm not sure I tried very hard.

Peter

Peter:

I'm glad to hear that multiple Citibank accounts will Direct Connect into Quicken. One of the quirks with my Citi credit cards is that not more than 2 per ID can be activated for Direct Download at a time. So, I would stick to your separate IDs, even though you can go on the web site and choose to add cards to your IDs.

Bob

Bob,

Are you talking about Citibank banking accounts or credit card accounts?

I have 13 bank accounts that work through direct connect. They don't seem to even shut off closed accounts so if there is some limit, I will eventually hit it.

I have 2 Citicard accounts. However, each has it's own ID. I don't think I was able to set up one ID for both, but I'm not sure I tried very hard.

Peter

That raises a couple of questions. I had issues opening one of those. The person who told me about it had issues too. It worked for me, except it would not show the name of the joint account holder. I was told on the phone to just do it in my name, it's a known problem, and I'd get paperwork to add a name. The paperwork wasn't with the packet they sent, and I called again. I was told that there's no such paperwork, and I need to go to a branch to fix it.

So if you opened multiple accounts, I'm assuming that you did something different. The other issue is that the on line agreement lists an age requirement of 18 or above. So if you mean kids in the literal sense, I'd like to know how that worked. I'd like to open accounts for my kids too, but Citibank was pretty clear about it when I asked them. I'm not sure why, since they gave me an account when I was 17.