In 2009, shortly before moving to Mexico I opened a Citibank Friendship account. This means you have a USA account and you can transfer your U.S. dollars to your Mexico account easily and without fees. You could also use your ATM card (either USA or MEXICO) without fees at a Banamex ATM machine without fees. It was a glorious thing! If I needed to transfer funds, it was a simple 2 minute online process. Now the "friendship" account is anything but friendly. They have discontinued online transfers. So, now you have to call the USA to transfer money and it can take up to 3 hours to get your pesos into your account. When you make a transfer to Mexico, you NO LONGER get a confirmation email. You have to keep going online to check if the transfer has gone through. Secondly, they have cancelled all online bill payments as well. Today I called to make a transfer and guess what?.....their system is down so I have to wait 2 hours to call them to see if I can transfer my money. Another problem was they closed my account TWICE, after 4 years of having an account, saying they didn't have the proper info. In those cases, they HELD MY MONEY for up to 2 weeks. Since I am not living in the U.S. I would have to fly to California to close the account and open a REAL friendly account with another bank. Moral of story.......don't bank with Banamex!
