Consumer complaint received 2020-05-02
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: LA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems
Sub-issue: Other problem

Complaint:
I opened up my account with Citi in XXXX, a few years later, roughly XXXX or XXXX closed it and stopped using their card and in fact destroyed the card itself. My balance was probably around {$5000.00} or so at the time. So I have been making payments for 16 years. I am using terms like 'probably ' or 'roughly ' because I do not have access to my account. In fact I found out many years later that since I closed my account they took away my 'login ' credentials! 
More importantly, I had opted to receive my statements electronically from the beginning. So the company knew, or certainly should have know that when they XXXX my 'logging into my account ' ability, I had no way of seeing details of my account nor any transactions, change in interest rate or anything at all. They would simply send me an email, since I had opted paperless and in the email always instructed to log in to see details! Over the years, I called and complained about it and they always said : " since my account was closed, for security reasons I could not have it activated ''. 
I lived with this situation for many years and I had setup my bank account 's bill payment service to automatically pay every month. So far so good. 
It was early XXXX that, because of some financial hardship, I reduced my automatic payment amount from roughly {$80.00}, which I knew was way more than the required minimum to {$40.00}, which I thought would meet the required minimum. I did not have the exact amount since I could not look it up. 
It turned out to be about {$5.00} short of minimum. I had walked into their trap. 
They, without notifying me, set the {$40.00} aside and counted that month as no payment. Added a late fee of about {$45.00} to it and jacked up the interest rate on my account to maximum possible. And this snowballed even though I never missed a payment. In fact my monthly payment would go directly to their late fees and not to principle, and they kept adding more late fees and the max interest. I was living overseas at the time and despite the time difference and costly phone calls they would not answer my questions since I did not have my account number that I had stopped using and did not have the card for some 12 or 13 years. They never did provide me with my account number and I found out what it is when I requested my credit report from the triple reporting agencies. 
All this could have been avoided if they would have kept my online access or switched my statements back to paper when they closed my online access. But then they would not have gotten roughly {$500.00} 'ADDITIONAL ' of my hard earned money. At the time of all this my balance was around {$2100.00} or so. 
How could they disable one 's online access to his own account, knowing that it is the only way I can see my account detail since I have opted 'paperless ' billing many years ago. And how could that have been security risk for me to access my own live, balance running account. 
Unethical at best, illegal at worst.

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