Consumer complaint received 2017-12-08
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: FL
Product: Debt collection
Sub-product: Credit card debt
Issue: Attempts to collect debt not owed
Sub-issue: Debt is not yours

Complaint:
I have been attempting to receive validation of an account from XXXX over the past four months. I have called repeatedly and sent written notifications for this information but nothing has been sent to me. This alleged debt along with others was obtained by someone other than myself around the same time, on the same date. I have placed fraud alerts on all of my credit reports. I have a police report that has some other accounts that were opened on the same date ( XX/XX/XXXX ) as this XXXX account that have been proven to not be mine. On XX/XX/XXXX I finally sent certified letters to the Credit Bureaus requesting proof of this account and received a letter from XXXX saying that they received my inquiry and have verified my account but no verification information sent. To date that is the only communication that I have received. I decided to call today ( XX/XX/XXXX ) and work something out with them as they have had my account under Fraud investigation for several months at this point and it is affecting my credit ( I was not sent any paperwork to fill out even though they claim they sent it ). After I was given the run around for about an hour I finally spoke to XXXX ( who was great ) and she stayed on the line until I had a live person from the Fraud department on the phone. I then proceeded to speak to XXXX and informed her that I wanted to try to settle the account because it was affecting me and that I did not have much money and could pay {$100.00} today. The account total is {$330.00}. She then told me that she could not offer me a settlement ( although the account is charged off ). I told her that I had never heard of that and I was willing to do this even though the account is not mine and they have never proven that it is mine. She told me that I would have to have a hardship. I asked her my choices of hardship and she told me that she can not tell me but I would have to tell her. I proceeded to tell her that I do not have much money and that financially I am not in a good place right now and that is why I am trying to better my credit by working with them. She basically brushed me off and still would not tell me anything about the hardship choices or offered anything to me after I told her everything. Yet, she told me I could send in payments but like I told her I do n't have anything like that and can not commit to making any payments. She was basically trying to make me pay them the whole thing even though it has already been charged off as a loss to the company. So instead of accepting a settlement they are just going to allow it to sit there until they sell it to a collection agency for pennies on the dollar in which I will then have an even bigger hit to my credit and they still get the tax reduction for it. I have never encountered a company that did not accept a settlement much less not even try to counter it. She was very rude and did not try to help at all. I requested to be sent to a supervisor and she denied that request and asked if there was anything else she could do and when I told her no I need to speak to someone else she abruptly hung up the phone. I was on the phone with the company for almost an hour and a half, talked to eight different people after getting the run around, offered to try to settle the account, just to be hung up on. This is unfair to me as I have patiently been awaiting their fraud results and still have not gotten anywhere. They keep reporting to the credit bureaus as a verified account but has not sent any proof. The only thing that XXXX offered me was to tell me the items purchased but as I told her that does not mean the account is mine. I tried to offer what I had and they did not even try to be reasonable with 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