Consumer complaint received 2020-07-15
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: IN
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Fees or interest
Sub-issue: Charged too much interest

Complaint:
I have had my Sears/Citibank Mastercard for many years. The balance as of my XX/XX/2020 statement was {$9400.00}, consisting of {$6400.00} at the regular interest rate of 21.24 %, and {$3000.00} in interest-deferred promotions. On XX/XX/2020 I made an online payment of {$6400.00} to pay off the entire regular interest balance. The only remaining amount should then have been for the promotional items with the first expiring XX/XX/2020. On the Sears/Citi payment website, there is an option to choose to pay promo balances early, instead of paying regular balances with interest, if someone would like to do that. I did NOT choose this option, since it makes no sense to pay off a zero interest item before a 21 % interest item. Note that having an option to select to pay off promo balances first implies that if you do not select to do so, items with interest or higher interest would be paid first. After my payment posted, I noted that my account still showed {$400.00} in regular interest charges, and the XX/XX/2020 promo of {$400.00} paid off! I called Customer Service and was told there was nothing they could do, that it was already applied. I was further told that this was their standard policy to apply extra payments to the promo balances when it was expiring " within 2 or 3 billing cycles. '' My major objection to this practice is how then is the promo for 12 months? The effectively changed the promo to 9 or 10 months, which is NOT how it was marketed. When I challenged the phone representative I was told that " If you called to make the payment we could have applied it to the regular balances, oh, but you wouldn't have known to ask. '' What????? If I knew to ask for something that you never told me I should do, and would never expect to have to call since it should be your practice by default ... you would have done so??? AND since you have an option to choose to pay the promo balances first, but I did NOT select it ( nor did you state that I did ), I was supposed to know that you would do so anyway??? I have talked to several different representatives, asked for this to be escalated, etc. I keep getting responses that tell me what they did ( applied {$400.00} of my payment to promo balance ), which I already know! Two days ago I received an email from " XXXX XXXX XXXX, Account  Manager '' asking me to call him to discuss this. I have done so multiple times, leaving messages, and emails with NO reply. This is further complicated by the fact that I have additional promotional items coming due in the next few months. This means that no matter how hard I try to pay off my regular interest items Sears/Citi will keep applying my payments to the interest-deferred items, paying them off months before they are due, and continuing to charge me interest of 21.24 %. This is WRONG. Either they need to explain that there is no way to pay off regular interest/purchase balances if you also have a promo rate, or they need to explain that promo balances will be paid first, making the promo period two to three months shorter than advertised. Supporting documents will be attached if allowed.

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 monetary relief