Consumer complaint received 2020-09-02
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: TX
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Closing your account
Sub-issue: Company closed your account

Complaint:
Ive been a Sears cardholder for over 14 years with demonstrated years of on time payment, paying more than the required amount due and no missed or late payments ( see recent attached credit report that shows 4 years of on time payments reported by Sears ). I  applied for the Consumer Financial Protection COVID-19 in XXXX for my Sears account, which would entitle me to two months of deferred payments. I submitted the request per the Sears online process and received a notification to check my Sears secure message for the approval response. There was a general message and did not provide a response or direction. As a result I resubmitted several times over several days and kept receiving the same message and finally sent a separate message to voice my concerns that there may be a glitch in their system. I finally received a letter in the mail dated XX/XX/XXXX regarding the approval for 2 months. 
I went on online to make my XXXX payment and noticed my available credit dropped from {$13000.00} to {$2500.00}. I was appalled to see over an 80 % reduction in my available credit. I immediately called to question the reason for such a drastic drop and was informed it was probably due to my payment history and after I insisted they review my account they could see clearly there was no history of missed payments and also reflected I always paid more than the amount due. They referred me to contact XXXX for further details. I explained my issue wasnt with XXXX as I know the 4 accounts on my report and my score and that my issue was with them as I am also familiar with payment history with Sears and can not understand why a drastic action was taken on my account. I received their letter dated XX/XX/XXXX, stating my credit line was being reduced and the decision based on their review that was processed by a credit scoring system that assigned a numerical value to various items on my account with them and my credit report. It also stated the following factors influenced their decision : Serious Delinquency Time since delinquency is too recent or unknown Amount past due on account Proportion of loan balances to loan amounts is too high None of those stated factors are reflective of my account. ( Please see attachments that shows 4 years of perfect on time payments ).  My XXXX credit score has been pretty consistent over the past 3 years. I called Sears again on XX/XX/XXXX in attempt to address this issue as I was feeling harassed and my character was being defamed as the action taken by Sears took my credit utilization 17 % to 95 % and causing my overall credit utilization to be 35 % when the recommendation is under 30 %. I spoke to XXXX, XXXX and XXXX. XXXX stated they do periodic reviews on all their accounts to determine if they should increase/decrease credit lines. I stated there has been nothing negative on my account to substantiate a 80 % decrease and I reiterated that I felt this is only a result of me applying for COVID and that Sears was looking for a problem when there wasnt a problem. In addition, I asked when my last periodic review was prior XX/XX/XXXX and she kept repeating XX/XX/XXXX. I said out of 14 years there must have been several as she stated they do periodic reviews ( My thought is there were no triggers of missed/late payments to substantiate any ) and XXXX could not provide any dates except for XX/XX/XXXX. 

As a result to protect my credit, I had an overall outstanding balance of approximately {$2400.00} that I needed to reduce due to the drop of available credit now being {$2500.00} to get the utilization back down to an acceptable amount I made the below payments : XX/XX/XXXX - {$150.00} XX/XX/XXXX - {$1000.00} XX/XX/XXXX - {$1000.00} XX/XX/XXXX - {$500.00} ( which resulted in a XXXX balance ) I had few charges in XXXX for {$170.00} and some toll charges under {$20.00} and made the below payments XX/XX/XXXX - {$100.00} XX/XX/XXXX - {$45.00} XX/XX/XXXX - {$39.00} ( Again resulting in a XXXX balance ) So again, Im still demonstrating my ability to be responsible despite the unfairness of reducing my available credit and not incurring unnecessary interest charges. HOWEVER, today I received an email that states a have a secure message in my Sears inbox regarding my account that will be Closed effective today citing the exact same reasons as used for the available decrease. 

Serious Delinquency Time since delinquency is too recent or unknown Amount past due on account Proportion of loan balances to loan amounts is too high Due to my swift decision to address this action by Sears in reducing my available balance by making those multiple payments and reducing my utilization, my XXXX credit score increased 20 points, which they listed my score on each mailing. Again, no delinquency, no past due and an increase in my FICO score So, now I can no longer allow this unfair treatment to continue as I feel targeted as a response to me applying for COVID as this is when all these changes occurred. I have never abused my charging privileges, never been over 17-20 % utilization, so as a result of me protecting my credit and making large payments to reduce the 95 % utilization from Sears reducing my credit line Sears now penalized me again for doing the right thing and CLOSE my account with no valid reason as I have made multiple payments each month and got my utilization back down to 4 % from the 95 % and by closing my account, it will clearly drop my score ( 14 years of demonstrated credit ) .This is UNACCEPTABLE! 

So I guess now they have my account flagged for reviews which facilitated this unnecessary action to close my account BUT, there has been nothing but positivity on my account and multiple payments.

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