You are now in our speech enabled system. To switch back to our touch tone press star star at any time. Please say or enter your debit or ATM card number."
Calling Citibank turned out to be a big hassle, and next time, I will likely just go into my local branch to deal with financing questions. That said, when I finally got to an agent, they were helpful and able to address my concerns. In fact, the agent I talked to was very jovial, and I could have joked with her about the weather and finances happily for the half an hour that I spent on hold. The phone system just isn't set up for someone who doesn't already have a Citi account, and that was the irritating part.
I initially called Citibank because I'm exploring mortgage options and haven't picked a final banking institution yet. I want to see what types of rates Citibank offers qualified customers to see if I can do better than my current offers. My credit score is great, so it's just a matter of who has the most incentives right now to draw my attention their way. Going into the phone call, I knew that I might have to wait because Citibank has a lot of customers, but I didn't expect it would be so hard to get directed to a department that doesn't involve entering my phone number.
In fact, half of the time I spent on the phone with the automated system consisted of me repeating that I didn't have an account number. It took the phone system four attempts to gather the information from me to realize that I may be calling with another request. This is a bit annoying, and it seems to me like something that should be addressed. I imagine a lot of people give up before they even get close to actually talking to an agent because it feels like the system isn't listening to them.
I went in a vicious circle for almost five minutes where the system would tell me, "How would you like to access your account information? You can say ATM debit card, Social Security card or taxpayer ID card," in varying formats. When it finally gave me some options for non-account holders, I still had to get through three more directories before I was able to get an agent. Of course, I didn't get straight to an agent either, I had to wait on hold. There just seems to be so much wasted time using this service. I would have preferred to go straight to a hold line and just wait my turn. The agent was helpful, so my ten-minute phone call paid off, and I got some information I needed.