Consumer complaint received 2020-11-14
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: CA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: Store credit card
Issue: Problem with a purchase shown on your statement
Sub-issue: Credit card company isn't resolving a dispute about a purchase on your statement

Complaint:
Dear Sir / Madam, I have been disputing charges on my Macy 's store credit card dating back to XXXX / XXXX of XXXX. I received a letter from Macy 's at that time saying I have unpaid balances & late fees. However, my online account correctly showed a {$0.00} balance throughout this whole time. The last transaction I made was in XXXX XXXX, but I returned the merchandise immediately after purchase. This was also correctly shown on the online account and I had no reason to think I was missing payments because my online account accurately reflected a {$0.00} balance. Macy 's at that time said they will resolve this matter but due to Covid, it could take up to 3 months to fix this error on their part. 

They also assured me that I can ignore the monthly paper bills we will receive during the time of the investigation and that it's normal for their systems to not recognize the change for up to 3 months. All this time, my online account continued to correctly show a {$0.00} balance. I never received any confirmation on the resolution of the dispute but was surprised to get a call in XXXX from a collection agency, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX was the representative ) that the balance was moved over to collections. 

XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX then restarted a dispute claim with Macy 's. I also made it clear that this is a classic example of a UDAAP violation and that I will be filing a complaint with the CFPB and FDIC. Not only does Macy 's own system show a {$0.00} balance for my card, they continued to send this account to collections even while there was a dispute filed by the account holder. Both of these are in violation of federal laws. 

I followed up with XXXX XXXX several times and they were still waiting on Macy 's to complete their investigation. Then all of a sudden, I received a letter in the mail that my account was assigned to another collections agency, XXXX XXXX now as of XX/XX/XXXX. 

Per my call with XXXX XXXX and his supervisor XXXX XXXX, at XXXX XXXX, on Friday, XX/XX/XXXX, from the notes that they both had, it seems that Macy 's own investigation uncovered that the last time I had a transaction was in XXXX XXXX and that my statement balance was {$0.00} as of XXXX XXXX. 

However, come XXXX. XXXX, Macy 's somehow started claiming that I have a statement balance and also that I missed payments even though I had not made any further transactions and had a XXXX balance in XXXX XXXX. You will see that this is accurately captured based on the screenshots I took of my account with Macy 's in the attachments included with this email. 

So, from what I can tell, Macy 's is now knowingly trying to perpetuate fraud because their own investigation uncovered there to be a glitch in their system that is incorrectly trying to charge me a balance even with no purchases but instead of trying to resolve the error on their part, they fired the previous collection agency and hired a new one, XXXX XXXX, to be party to their fraud. 

Let me be very clear ... I will not pay for items that I did not purchase no matter how painful they try to make it to resolve their own error. This are multiple UDAAP violations here and I've been dealing with this since XXXX / XXXX and I will pursue legal action if this is not resolved immediately. 

Thanks.

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