Consumer complaint received 2019-09-04
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: WA
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've had so many problems as a result of customer service at Citi Bank and the AAadvantage card. 

1st Issue : I did not receive the card for 1.5 months after signing up because they had my apartment number wrong. I called 3 times and each time no one recognized the error. 
2nd Issue : I had to postpone a major purchase that I was planning in order to meet the minimum. 

3rd Issue : After 2 days of use, I had my first fraud. 

4th Issue : They would not expedite a new card and I had to wait another week to receive the 2nd card ( still postponing the purchase ). 

5th issue : When I went to make this purchase I was denied at XXXX XXXX   because the purchase was too large 6th Issue : When i tried to call on the spot at XXXX XXXX  to get them to allow the purchase, I was on the phone for 1 hour trying to verify my identity ( apparently social security number wasn't enough ). After a myriad of questioning, 2 supervisors, and them telling me they could not verify my identity to make the purchase, they asked for another credit card number and for the number of that credit card company. 

7th issue : When i finally made the rewards, I realized that the flights offered on XXXX XXXX were the worst possible routes. For example ... XXXX to XXXX with 2 stops and an 8 hour layover. 

8th Issue : After less than a year of use I stopped using. I was charged a XXXX dollar membership fee on XXXX statement when the first year fee should have been waived. I did not make my first purchase until end of XX/XX/2018 because it took so long for the card to arrive. 

9th issue : I received a late fee, of which they were unwilling to waive because of the membership fee that was charged early. 

10th issue : After only 1 month, the bill was sent to collections! 

11th Issue : I was on the phone for 2 hours with customer service trying to get the membership fee either waived or credited. After speaking with 5 different representatives I finally learned that I could transfer to another card and receive a credit on that new card. Still no late fee waived. 

12th Issue : The person on the line who transferred my credit card would not allow me to interrupt his recorded required speech on the new card and thus i was forced to write my questions down until the end of his 15 minute speech. One question was ... is the address up to date. It was not, and of course he said he could not change that address now because he was too far into the process. I had to call back in order to change it. He informed I should pay the balance off right away online 13th Issue : I went to pay the credit card off online and of course I could not because the card had already been transferred. I had to call back and pay by phone.

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