April 30 (Bloomberg) -- Prabhudev Konana traveled to Paris in December and used his Citigroup Inc. credit card to pay hotel and restaurant bills. When he got home to Austin, Texas, he was upset to see two different currency exchange rates for charges made the same day, one 3.6 percent higher than the other. He e-mailed Citigroup to complain. âThe response was, âGo read your contract,ââ says Konana, 47, a professor at the University of Texasâs McCombs School of Business. âThe arrogance was just unbelievable.â Next, the bank increased the interest rate on his card to 20 percent from 13 percent. âThey lost me as a customer.â Citigroup, Bank of America Corp. and the rest of the top seven U.S. card issuers together raked in more than $27 billion in operating profit from credit cards in 2007, according to Bloomberg data. Now theyâre mostly earning customer outrage. Banks are cutting credit lines and raising fees -- and are reluctant to pass along the Federal Reserve interest-rate cuts meant to boost the sagging economy. President Barack Obama, who met card executives at the White House on April 23, says customers deserve protection from unfair practices. Citigroup wonât comment on specific customers, spokesman Samuel Wang says. Banks need healthy credit card earnings, since they can no longer rely on profits from trading the exotic securities that brought the markets to the abyss. Now, they are squandering customer loyalty and curtailing lending, which will hurt them in the long run, says Robert Hammer, chief executive officer of Thousand Oaks, California-based credit card advisory firm R.K. Hammer Investment Bankers. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20603037&sid=a4tXvQTb.j0Q&refer=invest Rip off de luxe...
f him, the west and mainly america & england literlly breed arrogance and ignorance, specially university professors, they are some of the worst in terms of arrogance why do people act all surprised when a CC company turns around and f*ks them over, how is that even something unexpected?