Beware ATM exchange rate on Citi Plus account

[madrooster]

FWIW Chase in Manhattan was the culprit at 4.56%

I can confirm Chase ATMs do in fact charge an ATM owner fee. In Arizona I can confirm it's $2.50 USD but I'm not sure if it varies in other states. If you can find a Walmart, Walmart ATMs tend to be cheaper on the ATM owner fee ($1.50 USD in Arizona).

This fee does NOT show up in the amount in your Citibank statement. So for example if you withdraw $100 USD, and the fee was $2.50, for a total of $102.50 USD... the Citi statement will only show $100.00 USD. This will be why you are seeing a wild fx spread.

 

[kash_0]

I recently had issues with the chip on my card within the U.S., apparently it's a well known issue. I had no choice but to use non-Citi ATMs and get slugged anywhere from $2 to $4. If you call Citi about the issue they should refund you the fees incurred.

 

[nickfromeastryde]

We just did a RTW trip and I used the Citibank Plus for all my ATM withdrawals and most of the time was very happy with the rates. Anyway after reading this thread, I thought I would recheck all my transactions against XE.COM and the results are quite surprising though still very pleasing. The numbers I quote below is the difference in percentage terms of the rate I received against the XE historical rate for that day. Obviously the XE rate would have fluctuated through the day whereas I am just looking at I presume a closing rate so the comparisons aren't quite apples to apples

South Africa (Non Citibank ATM) 0.63%
Qatar (Non Citibank ATM) 0.27%
Switzerland (Non Citibank ATM) 1.07%
Euro Countries (Non Citibank ATM) ranged between 0.92% and 1.76%
United States (Citibank ATM's) - I made 6 sets of withdrawals and on all occasions actually received a (very) slightly better rate than the XE quoted rate which is a real surprise.
Colombia (Citibank ATM's) ranged between 0.1% and 2.30% which is quite a lot seeing as we always used a Citibank ATM. Most of the transactions were less than 1%

Overall very happy. Obviously you risk exchange rate changes by not locking in but that can go both ways. Certainly from my perspective using this card is easily the cheapest and best value option to change AUD into foreign cash

 

[Jeffrey O'Neill]

Overall very happy. Obviously you risk exchange rate changes by not locking in but that can go both ways. Certainly from my perspective using this card is easily the cheapest and best value option to change AUD into foreign cash

Considering how poor most FOREX companies are for cash, and the travel cards are not even worth bothering with, the CB card seems to be the best way to access cash and minimise risks by not having too much cash on you.

 

[kash_0]

Considering how poor most FOREX companies are for cash, and the travel cards are not even worth bothering with, the CB card seems to be the best way to access cash and minimise risks by not having too much cash on you.

I completely agree...not having to carry obscene amounts of cash is definitely a positive.