Consumer complaint received 2021-01-08
Company: CITIZENS FINANCIAL GROUP, INC.
State: MA
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Other banking product or service
Issue: Problem with a lender or other company charging your account
Sub-issue: Transaction was not authorized

Complaint:
Hello, my name is XXXX XXXX and I used to bank with Citizens Bank, but over the last few months I have made the decision to no longer due so due to their poor fraud protection and correction. When I first started banking with Citizens bank, I was a happy customer and I thought you were wonderful bank. In the last year, my opinions towards Citizens have changed significantly. Citizens has proven to be in an inadequate bank that can not properly protect their customers and then when Citizens Bank is in the wrong they can not properly correct their mistake. A few months back my banking information and cash app somehow was compromised and I lost {$1500.00} on XX/XX/XXXX. My account is a student account and I have never spent more than maybe {$500.00} on my account however I got no notification from Citizens about this transaction and that it could possibly be fraud. The only reason I found the charge was because I checked my bank account statements. Citizens clearly can not properly protect the money of their customers. As a student, and someone who has experienced fraud before Citizens should have informed me of putting a limit on my card and/or receiving notifications but no member of the citizens team informed me to do so. I was then led on a goose chase for more than 3 months trying to get my money back and was told contradictory information from various branch managers and customer service reps. I was initially granted the money back and then the claim was a reversed. I went to my local branch manager to reopen the claim and had to do so 2-3x because citizens kept claiming that I had closed the claim. I was told that my money would be returned to me since it was clear that was a fraud charge, however that has not been the case. 

Since this was a fraud act through cash app, my local branch manager gave me a cashapp support number attached to the transaction which turned our to be fraud and led to me losing another XXXX $ and this was on XX/XX/XXXX. When I had googled cash app support number, I found that there was no number that directly brought you to a live representative, it was all done through email. Citizens bank didnt check the number to make sure it was actually valid and led me to losing more money of the sum of {$500.00}. 

Citizens has decided to reverse the money they gave me for both these initial charges which is extremely infuriating, because I would not have lost this money if Citizens had actually done their job as a bank protecting their customers and their money. The worst part of all is I talked to a manager to talk about the {$1500.00} claim and he told me that yes Citizens had made a mistake but there was nothing they could do to help me and did confirm with me that citizens loses millions towards fraud but for some reason they cant reimburse me for the money I lost to fraud which I might not have if they had properly protected my account and confirmed that information they were giving their customers was indeed correct and safe. I have never been more frustrated or aggravated with a bank and I just hope that for their future customers they can do better because do to their poor banking management I have now lost {$2000.00}.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation