Consumer complaint received 2019-09-25
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: MD
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Other transaction problem

Complaint:
TLDR : I transferred XXXX $ to my landlord via XXXX from XXXX XXXX XXXX app to her account with Citi bank, however, she did not receive the money and the money was not returned to me either. Citi has the money and they are neither willing to complete the transaction nor return the money. 

On XX/XX/XXXX I sent my landlord XXXX $ for first month rent plus deposit through XXXX XXXX XXXX ( XXXX ) App, which in turn was using XXXX to transfer the money to her Citi bank account. However, she did not receive the money, so within a week, on XX/XX/XXXX we went to a XXXX branch and asked them about this. In the same meeting she called her bank and and the XXXX accountant talked with Citi on her behalf about this. At the end everyone assured us that the money will be delivered shortly, or in the worst case scenario it will be returned within a month. 

On XX/XX/XXXX of XXXX, my landlord, whom had not received her money, pressured me to send her the money again, which I did, first through XXXX again, which I immediately cancelled ( this one got returned ) and then through XXXX. This transaction was successful. 

After a month had passed and the money was not returned to me or delivered to my landlord, I filed a claim to XXXX for the first time. I will attach a picture of the response I got, but it boils down to that they have completed the transaction as I have instructed and my account will not be Credited. After visiting XXXX and calling them, it turned out that Citi had not responded to their phone call inquiry. So I consulted with XXXX 's Graduate Legal Aid Office ( GLAO ), who gave me the assurance that for these civil cases there's a 3 year statue of limitations. And so I filed another claim with XXXX and got a similar respond. My landlord can testify that she also went to Citi, and they told her that they had not received the money. 

As an XXXX XXXX student who's very busy, I couldn't follow up on this very often, but I did visit XXXX branches at least half a dozen times whenever I could, usually to no avail. At this point we were suspecting maybe XXXX has not transferred the money, so my landlord tried contacting them, however they only responded saying XXXX does not keep the money and it is either returned or gone through. 

This was the situation until early XXXX that in one of my visits to XXXX, the accountant whom I am very grateful of, after intensive phone call sessions cracked the case and discovered that for the last claim I had filed with them, Citi had finally answered the phone call and had confirmed that they had received the money!! This made me very suspicious, so after consulting with GLAO again, I talked with my landlord and told her the situation, she then sent me a copy of her bank statement for the corresponding month, and clearly the money was not represented there. 

So on Friday XX/XX/XXXX of XXXX my landlord and I went to a branch of Citi bank, asking about the situation. After a long phone call session, someone behind the phone acknowledged the money was indeed in Citi 's hands so they opened a claim assuring us that the situation is finally going to be resolved either by returning the money or completing the transaction. 

However, few days later they sent a letter saying " Per the Electronic Fund Transfer Act -- Regulation E, because of the timing of this transaction, it will not be honored. ''!! This is very outrageous. I again consulted with XXXX 's GLAO, who showed me a passage in EFTA,  basically saying that we needed to complain within 60 days. ( Which we had done!!! ) He thought this was outrageous too, specially because we had complained about this several times within that 60 day period and afterwards. He then forwarded me to your website for filing a complain as my last hope before suing them in a court.

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