Consumer complaint received 2020-01-21
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:
Citibank closed my Citi Diamond Preferred credit card and did not violate the terms of the agreement. My account was closed in error but its proven almost impossible to speak with someone that can listen to the facts and events. The people that made the decision will not talk to me on the phone. Citi has changed the story on why the account was closed. Originally Citi said I had made 3 NSF payments over the life of the account. Not true. I sent Citi a 14 page fax and proved that was not the case. Afterwards Citi issued a new letter and said the account was closed due to 1 NSF payment in the past 6 months. Below I provide the details of the 1 error I made which should never have resulted in the closure of my account. 

FYI - I have a case pending with the " Citi Executive Response Team '' to reopen my account. I assume it will be denied. This case has been open for 2 weeks and my case manager is now out of office until XX/XX/XXXX. When I opened the case she agreed my account should have never been closed and I am the ideal customer Citi wants to attract. But they are treating me like I am bankrupt and don't pay my bills. 

FYI - I have a 2nd Citi card with a {$20000.00} limit and {$0.00} balance. That account remains open. 

XX/XX/XXXX - Citibank closed my Citi Diamond Preferred credit card without notice. I am the ideal Citi customer, spending over {$10000.00} annually on this card and paying it off. This card had a {$28000.00} limit. I had never paid it late. I have a XXXX FICO score ( at the time ). I make over {$250000.00} a year and I have money in the bank. I have called citi 15 times at least. I have submitted two requests to reopen my account. Both requests were denied, a different reason for account closure was given with each denial. These reopen requests go to the card services department. Customers can not speak to this department. Customer can only speak to customer service. Customer service submits a request to reopen, it goes to card services. You have to call back in to customer service to find out what the answer was. My experience of calling and trying to get help has been terrible. Nobody would listen to what I was saying. Eventually I ended up sending 14 pages of documentation on XXXX XXXX  XXXX. I spent {$25.00} at XXXX XXXX to send this fax. I was traveling for the holidays and did not have access to a fax machine. 

Why was my account closed - Citi says I have made XXXX NSF payment in the past 6 months. On XX/XX/XXXX I decided to make a second payment to my citi card for the month of XX/XX/XXXX. Again, this was a secondary payment. My XX/XX/XXXX payment was made and posted on time. I logged into the citi app on XX/XX/XXXX to make the additional payment to principal of {$240.00}. Generally I use my XXXXXX/XX/XXXX checking account which is already linked to Citi for payments. But on XX/XX/XXXX madethe mistake ( This is where I messed up ) of deciding to use my XXXX checking account. This was the first time I had used XXXX to pay Citi. I have two XXXX accounts. XXXX account # XXXX has over {$43000.00} in cash at all times. There is no debit card tied to this account. XXXX account # 2 has a debit card tied to it and runs a low balance and Imove funds into it if and when needed from the {$43000.00} account. Basically if I want to use the XXXX debit card XXXX transfer money to that account. When I added XXXX as a payment source I made the mistake of adding XXXX account # 2 with low funds. I meant to add XXXX account # 1 with {$43000.00}. I made the payment of {$240.00} and didn't think about it again. On XX/XX/XXXX Citi emailed me that my payment was rejected for NSF. I saw this email on XX/XX/XXXX and logged in right away to fix that issue but found my Citi Diamond preferred account was closed. I called customer service around XXXX on XX/XX/XXXX to start the process to reopen my account. I explained the mistake I had made. On XX/XX/XXXX I called back and found the request to reopen had been rejected. 

Citi claimed I had violated terms and made XXXX NFS payments over the life of the account. Citi claimed I made two payments for {$25.00} XXXX Not true ) on XX/XX/XXXX and both were rejected for " Account Frozen ''. And the 3rd payment of course was XX/XX/XXXX from XXXX. I sent Citi a 14 page fax on XX/XX/XXXX to prove I did not have 3 NFS. This was my XXXX request to reopen the account. I get into more of that detail below. 



XX/XX/XXXX - My XXXX Business Checking account ending in XXXX was breached online. Someone accessed my account online and transferred out {$5000.00}. I caught the fraud, changed my XXXX password and stopped it before more money could be transferred. XXXX forced me to open a new checking account ( I had {$48000.00} in the account that was breached ( XXXX ). I had no choice here and had to open the new checking account. XXXX did a partial freeze on account XXXX but said I could still use it. There was {$35.00} remaining in account XXXX. On XX/XX/XXXX I paid Citi {$25.00} XXXX there was {$35.00} in the account XXXX ). There was only one payment attempt. Citi rejected his payment for " Account frozen ''. So Ipaid from another account and never thought anything about it. 
It seems that Citi counted this 1 payment as 2 payments. In my 14 page fax I showed citi chase statements that only one payment was made. I sent Citi the fraud info, documents where XXXX approved my fraud claim, documents where chase forced me to open a new account, documents where I had {$35.00} in account XXXX but the {$25.00} payment to Citi as rejected. In the end Citi should have removed the 1 NFS from XX/XX/XXXX from my account record. Instead of removing it, they counted it twice! When I made the 2nd request to reopen the account on XX/XX/XXXX, in the 14 pages I faxed, I explained all of this. Citi denied the request to reopen. But theychanged the reason why. Now they claim I had made 1 NFS in the past 6 months. They are now referring only to the XX/XX/XXXX payment from XXXX. 

In short, I made one NFS payment because I added the wrong bank account for my extra payment in XX/XX/XXXX. It was a simple mistake. Citi closed my account which dropped my credit score. I lost {$28000.00} in available credit. I am a great customer, I spend a lot of money, always pay on time, pay off the full balance annually, and I have many cards with high limits. I just want my account reopened as I didn't do anything wrong. Hopefully the Citi Exec response team will agree and reopen it. Citi is treating me like I am not a qualified customer. I am over qualified if anything.

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