Consumer complaint received 2020-03-26
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: CA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems
Sub-issue: Problem with customer service

Complaint:
( Related to XXXX Reports XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX, XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX, XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX where employees of XXXX, XXXX XXXX, CA impersonated COMPLAINTANT to trigger Citi 's fraud alert by failing to pass authentication during a call with Citi employees, in order to generate a false fraud alert against his account. XXXX 's strangeness is shown by pretending to connect to Citi via a conference call with the COMPLAINTANT when XXXX 's representative was only calling Citi to skip the authentication to trigger a fraud alert & FTC # XXXX ) COMPLAINTANT has noticed incessant behaviors of Citi employees generating manual locks / fraud alerts, in an attempt to force COMPLAINTANT to call its customer service to unlock the card. There are ample examples including XX/XX/XXXX Fraud Alert where Citis automated system promptly notifies the COMPLAINTANT upon detecting potential fraud attempt via text and email. However, in this instance, there were no email or text alerts that system would send on its own without manual employee intervention, which the system would send should there be a concerning activity regarding COMPLAINTANT 's  account. In/About XX/XX/XXXX, COMPLAINTANT has  successfully registered the Citi card with XXXX. In/About XX/XX/XXXX another correction was made with XXXX. On XXXX XXXX XXXX  PST, Citi employees asserted that COMPLAINTANTs change of email with XXXX has caused the issue although COMPLAINTANT has received no text/email alert from the Citi 's system. ( In general, credit card companies or payment processors would delegate this task to phone or payment processors, who would verify that the registered ID/email/phone numbers belong to the valid credit cards. Banking institutions themselves do not have views into processors ' inner system as they only process transactions that were already filtered through. For example, there is no need for banking institutions to be aware of email, id or phone number change as payment processors would detect these on their own before sending the transactions through the banking institutions ). When questioned, Citi employees stated that reason for not sending text/email fraud alert is due to having to speak to the COMPLAINTANT for this issue. However, this still doesnt explain why ( 1 ) Citi didnt notify the COMPLAINTANT via text/email of this supposed fraud attempt after XXXX successfully accepted the card into the system and ( 2 ) Why fraud alert lock was triggered after around 48 hours. Citi shouldnt adjust its security stance of its card by waiting for the COMPLAINTANT to  open the Citi app to view the warning message, instead of immediately alerting via text/email. 
Having observed similar patterns through the course of 1 year, COMPLAINTANT wonders whether employees of Citi have constant need to fabricate reasons to jam the transactions against the COMPLAINTANT, in order to portray COMPLAINTANT as a strange and/or dangerous customer, while portraying themselves intact as ordinary people. ( to whichever audience that they might deem worthy enough )

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