Consumer complaint received 2020-09-16
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: OH
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Advertising and marketing, including promotional offers
Sub-issue: Didn't receive advertised or promotional terms

Complaint:
Note : I originally sent this to an consumer rights attorney. He could not find any information and said that it warrented a complaint to CFPB. I can provide the statements that I am reffering to in the notes below ... 

On XX/XX/XXXX at approximately XXXX XXXX I was updating my spreadsheet that listed the promotional terms, as well as the APRs for all of my credit cards. It also contains information on which balances I need to pay first in order to avoid the heaviest interest charges. 

When I was reviewing my spreadsheet I saw that I was about a year in with my Citi Diamond card. And my promotional terms would expire soon. 

It shows the terms that I agreed to when I transferred a balance to them. Last year around this time I transferred my XXXX balance at 1.99 % for 18 months. I believe I did this with the checks I received in the mail. 

I had this card set up for automatic payments so I thought I needed to check in to see where I was with it. 

When I logged into my account something strange had occurred. I was paying the full interest of the card! I discovered that I paid almost 700 $ just this year from making minimum payments. That was not at all the 1.99 % balance transfer that I agreed upon. This was obviously a mistake so I called Citi. After about a half hour of being on hold, the representative came back. He was speaking with his manager to figure out what happened. 

When he came back he told me something like this.. We see that you did the transfer from your but you also made a prior payment that paid off the balance of the card. Since you paid this balance in full you do not get the promotional balance of 1.99 %. At this point I needed to speak to this particular manager. This did not make ANY sense to me and I was angry. I may have used words like convoluted XXXX! I think I asked the manager if he really thought that this was cool to do to customers in which he ignored me. So after another 20 minutes or so of arguing with this particular manager I demanded a printout of every single one of my statements. I kept asking if he was going to help me because this was extremely unfair and absolutely not the terms that I had agreed to. Why would I pay XXXX in fees to transfer a balance just so that I could pay more on it! That would be absurd. This whole thing was absurd. He ended up crediting the interest from my last two statements. I feel this is an admission of guilt but I still feel like I had a bait and switch pulled on me. If you take the time to review my statements. When I received the statements this is what it shows in order. 

STATEMENT 1 Shows the balance before the transfer. {$5400.00} It also includes an offer etended to me OFFER # 5 where it states that I am eligible for a transfer at 1.99 % with terms until XX/XX/XXXX STATEMENT 2 Shows where I pay off the ENTIRE BALANCE and accept OFFER # 5 to transfer my XXXX BALANCE of {$4400.00} with 1.99 % with terms until XX/XX/XXXX I also agree to pay the TRANSFER FEE of XXXX. 

STATEMENT 3 Shows where CITI CHANGED THE TERMS of our agreement, they delegate {$1700.00} to STANDARD PURCHASES, the other half was changed to OFFER # 4 at 0 % TERMS WHICH EXPIRE XX/XX/XXXX. 

Since I was paying other cards off and set up automatic payments I was unaware of the bait and switch until now. I am very frustrated and I feel scammed out of nearly {$700.00} and who knows how else they scammed me.

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