The Blue Dragon is Looking@Me: Citibank, I don't like you anymore

Today I face some problem with my Citibank Credit Card payment. This month's statement show that I didn't make a payment for last month, thus I am charged a late charges of RM 5 plus some interest (around RM 10). I am pretty sure I sent in the cheque, so I call their ever-ready call center.

Citibank seems to change their phone call system quite a bit, so I was a big confused but still manager to get through to an agent, no big deal. I was told that there is a problem with my cheque, that I wrote the wrong date. Okay, my fault then (I was still waiting for them to return my cheque to confirm that). Then, I was furious when they told I will be charged RM 50 as penalty for mailing in an invalid cheque. WTF! I almost swear to the agent. I tell myself no way I am going to pay for such a penalty, and told the agent that this act of penalty is equivalent to day light robbery. Then she tells me about how this is in the terms and conditions (who read those anyway? Citibank might as well write "anyone who sign up for Citibank credit card will sold as slave for life" in small print). Then, she offer to appeal for me and this would take 3 working days. Fine, I'll wait.

It's pretty simple, I am a customer and I don't like to be penalise, even though it is my fault. I can barely tolerate with the late charges, but RM 50 penalty is absolutely not acceptable. Is as if they don't make enough money because I spent too little and always pay on time, thus they have to impose some measure to squeeze more money out of me! Anyway, my stand is if they penalise me more then RM 10 for this matter, I would have to cancel the card. Being penalise and paying the penalty make me look absolutely stupid and feel helpless, not to mentioned being ripped of, which I don't like at all.

I perceived Citibank to be a good bank so far, not many things I complaint about them, except the annual fees (which most other banks had waived, but they claim it is due to Bank Negara rulings on foreign bank). Anyway, it only take one stupid event (though it was the customer's fault) to ruin all the its reputation of being a good bank. Now I hate Citibank (unless they waive the penalty; waiving the penalty will make Citibank look much friendlier in public eye)! Citibank, I don't like you anymore! Yes, customer is very hard to satisfy and customer is always right. So, I am RIGHT!

Since I hate Citibank, so I google around to see the hatred ranking of Citibank. I found www.fuckcitibank.com (not very popular though), and Google shows 22,500 for "Citibank sucks" (that is not a lot considered the size of Citibank and the 8,058,044,651 google indexed).

Maybe I wasn't being fair to Citibank (should I?), since "Citibank sucks" will include any page which talk about Citibank (good or bad) and include the word sucks (might not refer to Citibank at all). So, I double quote to word as the search string (this would shows only pages with the two words shown together, side by side; it would be more credible). Google found

377 for "Citibank sucks"
122 for "hate Citibank"

Since I plan to move on to HSBC, so I google the following as well

14 for "HSBC sucks"
41 for "hate HSBC"

Since I am on googling spree, I tried the following as well

16,000 for "Microsoft Sucks"
2,300 for "Bill Gates Sucks"
5,090 for "Apple Sucks"
55 "Steve Jobs sucks"
2 for "Warren Buffet sucks" (everyone like the rich old investor)
9,210 for "Britney Spear sucks" (not that everyone hate her; but most of those site refer to sucking something else)

Then, I wonder who is the most hated man on earth, so I tried: