Thursday 22 January 2009

The Citi wants to put my Redicredit account to sleep

I received a letter from Citibank yesterday advising that due to "security concerns" my Redicredit (line of credit) account would be closed if it remained inactive until 19 February. I doubt that there are really any security issues with keeping the account open - more likely Citibank is simply looking for ways to reduce the total amount of credit it has approved for it's Australian customers.

I haven't used the account much in recent years (apart from a couple of very low interest rate offers which I used to save interest on my margin loan accounts) but I don't want to lose access to the $55,000 credit limit as it could be very handy in case of emergency. It would also be hard to require as the maximum credit limit available for new Redicredit applications is currently only $25,000. So to avoid my account being closed I today wrote a cheque on my Redicredit account to pay the $46 that is due for the annual renewal of my hovercraft's registration with NSW Maritime. Compared to my usual payment via EFT from my credit union savings account this will only cost me an extra 50c (for a stamp), and a negligible amount of interest (less than 70c a month) - even at Citibank's exorbitant rate of 18%pa. I may pay off the balance in full when next month's statement arrives, or I might just pay the minimum so the account remains "active" for a couple of extra months.

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