Hi everybody,
I just want to warn all Citibank account holders of something. When I opened my account at Citibank shortly after they opened their doors (I'm not sure how many years ago but around 10 maybe?), I was told the minimum monthly balance was 200,000 yen. Since then they upped the minimum monthly balance without telling me. Apparently it was raised to 500,000 in February or March of 2004. And the charge for going under this is 2100yen per month. So if any of you out there thought you could leave the account open for a while without close supervision (in my case 477,000 yen in it back in March), you will find that you have lost a bit of money for zero activity and at no cost to them. My loss is now 16,800 which is a nice chunk of change.

I am upset because the way the maintenance fee deduction is shown on the monthly statements is... on the back. They don't include it in the Balance Summary box on the front. I was looking at these, not registering the changes in the figures over the last month, and not expecting any transactions to appear because I hadn't made any, I never turned over the page.

So I guess everyone is going to tell me it's my fault for not paying attention, but I still think there are very likely others out there like me. So I want to let you know, so you can do something about it! And I am definitely going in to close my account there tomorrow. It's not like my money makes any more interest than it would at a Japanese bank! In fact I think I can do better in Postal Savings!

I received a letter from Citibank in November of 2003, along with my account statement, explaining the new charges effective March 2004. The letter is in English but it was folded so that the Japanese was facing out and it could have been perceived as junk mail. There is so much of that included with the mailings. The letter states that the monthly fee is waived if the monthly balance meets ONE of the following conditions:
1. foreign currency balance is equal to or higher than ¥ 200,000 equivalent.
2. Foreign currency balance is less than ¥ 200,000 equivalent and all balance of foreign currency and Japanese yen is equal to or higher than ¥ 500,000.
3. Japanese Yen balance is equal to or higher than ¥ 500,000.
Page 1 of the statement says "continued" , in mice type and there is also a message on the back of my April statement, in English stating the rules have been changed. Just prior to March 2004 the fee was waived if the balance was ¥ 300,000 equivalent in all deposits(Yen and foreign currencies were included in that figure). The new rules are tougher and considering the interest is almost nil it is not a good deal. But if you want banking services available in English, this is the price to be paid.