Consumer complaint received 2022-06-10
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: MD
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem when making payments
Sub-issue: Problem during payment process

Complaint:
CiTi Best Buy Credit Card - Late Fees & Interest Fraudulent Practices. 

First and foremost, Citi Best Buy Credit Cards make it nearly impossible to speak with a human, outsourced call centers and horrible connections are the norm. If and when you actually speak with a human, the difficulty to comprehend a normal conversation is a task all it self. Normal hold times to resolution is over 40 minutes if you can get calls escalated to a non scripted human. 

The CiTi Best Buy Credit Card has implemented a scheme to defraud customers through challenging roads to navigate paper billing. The CiTi Bank Best Buy Credit Card Fraudulently provides XXXX XXXX XXXX on monthly paper statements that are different than addresses the payments should be sent. The " XXXX game '' of moving XXXX XXXX XXXX triggers late payment fee charges in the system due to customers sending payments to addresses that are seemingly invalid. Over a period of XXXX weeks my family made multiple payments to the XXXX XXXX XXXX provided on the monthly statement sent to our home ( the same address provided by CiTi Best Buy ). 

The Scheme entails CiTI Bank Best Buy to access late fees by informing the customer payments were not received on time. The scheme typically goes unnoticed unless you check you billing statement each month. Once the late fees are accessed to the customer, CiTi Best Buy Credit Card customer service is unable to waive late fees as they utilize the excuse of USPS ( postal Service ) delays in physical mail is not " their " problem. However, by providing a Fraudulent XXXX XXXX to the customer the checks do arrive in time but are not collected by CiTi Best Buy, CiTi Best Buy does not provide resolution to customers, after 15 calls and multiple emails there has been zero resolution. We simply send checks via online banking to the XXXX XXXX provided. If it's the incorrect address the billing statement should in fact provide the proper address. The shell game went unnoticed by our family until a forensic review of statements sent by CiTi Best Buy was uncovered. 

Imagine the monthly late fees being collected by the millions of customers? The shell game and lack of empathy is incredibly below standards of a publicly traded company. The only response I have received is that I have to call customer service which is just a circular process of never ending telephone Holds. I was informed that they do not have the ability to make outgoing calls or the ability to respond to my concerns. So a company on the XXXX XXXX can't make outgoing calls or contact it's customers? We are closing the account and I hope that we can help families who may not know about these Fraudulent practices that deceive consumers through this statement XXXX XXXX XXXX game. Be safe and be aware of your billing statements.

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