Consumer complaint received 2021-09-07
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: UT
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Closing your account
Sub-issue: Company closed your account

Complaint:
The complaint is with the company Citibank. 
Back in XXXX, XXXX  I applied for a credit card through Costco which uses Citibank as their credit card company. I was immediately accepted as a customer with a credit limit of {$7200.00}. 

I waited the week until I got my physical card, activated it immediately and started using it pretty much right away, specifically at Costco. 

My husband, who was an authorized user on the account, setup autopay for us before our first payment was due, but when our first autopay transaction was meant to happen we were informed that our payment was kicked back, on XXXX, XXXX. The payment was made through our savings account, which at the time, we were unaware that this was a form of payment we couldnt use. On XX/XX/XXXX, and XXXX, my husband used our checking account and made payments via the Citibank app. These two payments can be seen as credited through our checking on the XXXX. The date of the autopay was moved out. 

On XXXX, XXXX, another autopay was taken from our savings, and once again rejected. My husband then called immediately to work out what issue we could be having with the autopay. After the conversation with the customer service agent, my husband then asked to stop the autopay, and he would just continue to make payments through the app since we had no issues with those, as those came straight from our checking account. He was assured that this could be done, and we should not have any more rejected autopay payments as they had been stopped. He did make another payment and it was taken from our account on XXXX, XXXX. 

We had been using the card a lot as we were very happy, and excited about the cash back percentages on things we used most, like Costco gas, and had been using it heavily. To keep up with what we had been spending, my husband made more payments on the following dates : XXXX, XXXX and XXXX, XXXX. 

Then on XXXX, XXXX, I was at a store trying to buy a stroller for our XXXX XXXX, and my Citibank card was declined. I called my husband to ask him if he had put a pause on our account for any reason, and when he answered no, he decided he would be the one to call the account since he had been dealing with the payment issues and was worried this might be the result of those problems. He also used their app, and found out that a payment had been kicked back again by autopay. He proceeded to make a payment while waiting for answers about our account. 

Because the account was closed, they would no longer give him any information since he was just an authorized user, not the main account holder, and I had to call them, still waiting in line, to try to figure out what the problem was. 

The customer service was now subpar that our account was closed. Thankfully, the store I was at did not have that issue and was kind enough to put the stroller on hold while I dealt with Citibank. After leaving the store, we were finally put through to what we believed was someone who worked in the credit department that would be able to work with us on fixing this issue. We were wrong. After looking at our account, he told us there was nothing he could do for us and he would not tell us any information about why our account was even closed. I stated several times that non-payment wasnt an issue as we had paid multiple times within the span of a month and would love to get this resolved today to continue being a Citibank costumer. I continually asked what I could do to fix this, and was told multiple times that there was nothing we could do until I received an official letter from Citibank stating the cause of closure, all while alluding to the fact that something may have been wrong with my credit report. 

It took a week to receive the letter. In the meantime, my husband and I looked at our credit report, and payment history to try to figure out what could have happened. On our end, everything seemed to be in good standing. 

The letter proceeded to state that because our payment had been reversed three times it was an automatic closure. As disappointed as we were when we read it, we assumed that now that we knew what the problem was, we could get it resolved. 

I, once again, called Citibank with the new information in hand. After I had been transferred to a supervisor, my account was finally opened and looked at. The notes from each previous call had been in there, and it was obvious to the employee that we had been very active in dealing this issue, and had done our due diligence to stop this problem from happening again. Yet, I was told there was nothing she could do. She proceeded to tell me that the only way to have a credit card account reactivated was to write the credit department a letter and mail it to them. No email, or phone call could resolve this issue. I understand that this is a tactic used by many companies to make it harder for their customers to have any issue solved within a timely manner. Even if they needed things in writing, I would like to believe that in the year 2021, an email would suffice. On top of this, the kind supervisor warned me that my attempts in getting this fixed so we could have our account reinstated may be futile. The credit department would look at the fact that we had three returned payments, and issue us their standard response of no. 

This situation is beyond frustrating for us, as we specifically opened up this account to help boost our credit so within the next couple years we could buy a house. Now, my once shining credit has a closed account on it. They chose to close our account within a two month period because of {$400.00} that had been returned. In that same period of time we paid them {$1400.00}. 

The files included are screenshots taking from the Citibank app showing our payments, and from our personal checking account showing that they did come out and were paid. 
The dates are different because it takes a couple days to process the payment and remove it from our checking account.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation