Consumer complaint received 2019-08-02
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: CA
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:
I have had a citi secured card for approximately for 4 months. Today, I logged onto my account to find out my account is closed. I put down a {$1800.00} deposit and have never missed one payment on this card. I actually paid more than was due each month in order to keep the cards utilization under 30 %. I have followed all suggestions from my veterans credit counselor and my XXXX credit monitoring service. I have no idea why my account was closed because I have to wait 7 to 10 days to receive the letter with the explanation as to why my account was closed. My birthday is this weekend and I was flying to XXXX XXXX with no credit card. I made a {$800.00} dollar payment on XXXX/XXXX/2019 and the very next day XXXX/XXXX/2019 my card is closed. Now I have to cancel my trip, I will lose the deposit I paid for the hotel as the hotel requires check in with the card that was used to place the deposit and reservation well that card is now closed and the hotel requires a 72 hour cancellation notice in order to get your deposit back. I am also not going to get refunded for my airline tickets either! This is a complete disaster for not only me but my family as well! What makes this whole situation worse is now my credit score is  going to take a huge hit! I have worked very hard to improve my credit not only to have good credit but to also purchase a home using my veterans benefits, I have been working with a credit counselor with Veterans mortgage company to  improve my credit and opening this citi secured card was suggested to improve my credit score, now my credit that I have worked so very hard to improve will take a huge hit and I will have to wait longer to purchase a home. I am literally almost in Tears! I make {$72000.00} dollars a year which may not  be a ton of money but I worked very hard to get my current position! I thought that I would graduate to a regular card in 18 month and maybe even qualify at that time for a better citi bank card. I am begging you please to find out what I did wrong and what ever that reason is why didn't I get a call or warning? I even changed banks and opened a citi checking and saving account and the majority of my pay being debited into my checking citi checking account. I opened my citi checking account with my direct deposit to ensure that I would never miss a payment on the citi secured card. I feel like I did this all in vain! This is Not a way to treat a US XXXX Veteran! I opened the secured citi cards account to build my credit as well as use that newly built credit to purchase a home utilizing my veteran benefits. I am so very disappointed and needed to bring this to your attention as I am at a complete loss as to why this has happened and I am know that next month citi bank will report this account as closed. Now what took me months and months to improve will be severely affected by this sudden closure of my Citi secured card! What makes this day even worse is that I got a notification from my XXXX credit monitoring that my score increased 36 points today and now that will for sure go down once this citi secured card is reported as closed. Thanks Citbank! I am a man who is now completely distraught I am seriously holding back tears right now! Not sure how I will explain this to my family either. This whole situation is horrible! I thought that Citi bank was great, the customer service was always awesome and professional. I got my card in a timely manner and was proud that I could put down the {$1800.00} deposit as that deposit amount really helped my credit score improve as well. I don't think that Citibank realizes how detrimental closing an account is to a person 's credit. I know I am only one customer out of their millions of other customers but their decision will really negatively affect my credit score but I suppose they do not really care!

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