Consumer complaint received 2019-04-27
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: TX
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Advertising and marketing, including promotional offers
Sub-issue: Confusing or misleading advertising about the credit card

Complaint:
I have been paying for the Citi Payment Safeguard service on my Citi Dividend MasterCard since activating this card on XX/XX/XXXX. At the time, I had to call Citi in order to activate my card, and the Citi representative would not let me activate my new card without accepting the Citi Payment Safeguard service. I later read the terms and conditions and understood that this service would take care of the minimum payment on my Citi Dividend MasterCard if I became unemployed, so I kept paying for the Citi Payment Safeguard service every month for over 14 years.

Earlier this year, I tried to activate my Citi Payment Safeguard benefit after becoming unemployed late last year. This process took several weeks as I had to wait for the form to apply for the benefit to arrive in the mail, gather the required documentation to send with the form, wait for a response via postal mail, and then send in additional documentation. The last response I received from Citi Payment Safeguard Processing Center. XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX, TX XXXX, dated XX/XX/XXXX, stated " We have received the request for activation of a Citi Payment  Safeguard job loss benefit. Our records indicate that you had no outstanding balance as of the date of the covered event. Therefore, no account credit is due. '' From this response, I understood that I would not be receiving a retroactive account credit for the first payment ( since it had now been several months since I became unemployed ), but my benefit had now been activated according according to the Terms and Conditions of the Citi Payment Safeguard Classic service : Job loss benefits : A Monthly Credit for up to 24 billing periods. The first Monthly Credit is based on the minimum payment due as shown on your statement for the billing period in which the event began. After that, each subsequent Monthly Credit will be based on the minimum payment due as shown on your billing statement for each billing period in which the job loss continues. 

However, I was very surprised to receive an alert from Citi on XX/XX/XXXX that my Citi Dividend MasterCard account was past due because the Monthly Credit had not been received for my minimum payment. When I called the number on my Citi Dividend MasterCard to ask about this, the Citi debt collection representative told me that I would need to call Citi Payment Safeguard directly, so I had to wait until the following Monday to speak to a Citi Payment Safeguard representative, who explained to me that the last response was a DENIAL of my job loss benefit, and how to submit an appeal, instead. 

The response I received to my appeal from the Citi Payment Safeguard Processing Center containing some additional clauses in the Citi Payment Safeguard Classic Terms and Conditions that were not in the copy that I had downloaded before submitting the claim arrived in the mail at the same time as a " Payment Safeguard Reminder '' from Citi ( at least the second such reminder I had received this year on my Citi Dividend MasterCard ) with a " helpful reminder that you purchased and are currently enrolled in a Citi Payment Safeguard program ... You are charged a fee for this product each month even if you pay your balance in full, so don't forget to take advantage of all its benefits. '' However, according to the additional clauses that the CIti Payment Safeguard Processing Center inserted into the Citi Payment Safeguard terms and conditions, someone who normally paid their balance in full would never be able to take advantage of these benefits. I pointed this out in my second appeal, sent XX/XX/XXXX, but still had not received a response before the close of the next billing cycle on my Citi Dividend MasterCard, so I called the Citi Payment Safeguard Processing center again on XX/XX/XXXX to inquire on the status of my appeal. The Citi Payment Safeguard representative told me that my appeal had been denied, again, but I still have not received a response explaining the discrepancy between the terms of this service as described in the original Citi Payment Safeguard Classic Terms and Conditions that I had downloaded from my Citi Dividend MasterCard account documents ( attached ), and the revised Terms and Conditions as stated by the Citi Payment Safeguard Processing Center.

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 non-monetary relief