Consumer complaint received 2021-08-16
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Closing an account
Sub-issue: Company closed your account

Complaint:
To whom it may concern, I'm writing this because my account with Citibank was closed, and I believe without any consideration of customer rights and force majore situations due to the current pandemic. 

I've been overseas since before the pandemic started and I can not travel back from XXXX  until the next year. 
I'm sure you get that kind of problems a lot these days. It's a human problem, we all are humans, banks serve not only citizens of US who are currently in US, they serve everyone with social security and those who have any sort of residency there. 
I have had my Citi account since XXXX, when I moved to NY from XXXX to start my studies at XXXX XXXX. 
While I travelled back to XXXX to make a film ( I'm a filmmaker and film industry activist ), pandemic started, I got stuck without being able to travel since embassies don't give out visas now and obviously with time there came issues regulating my XXXX XXXX  account. 

At first my Citi ATM card expired XX/XX/XXXX and I could not get a replacement from XXXX where I currently am. We had a war start here and state postal doesn't work here and at best takes 5-6 months for a post card to arrive. I requested a new card to be sent to me at some point but it never arrived.

Then because of not having an ATM card - my online account got closed so I could no longer see what was happening with my checking/credit accounts and neither could make payments from overseas where there is no Citi branch. This is so unreasonable. Why could not they maintain ppl 's online accounts? There was money on my checking account that I couldn't see or check the amount of! I had not idea that for a long time after having no more online access to my account, Citi started charging XXXX $ monthly fees for keeping the account open, then it got dried up, then accumulated late fees and in the end just got closed. No notification, no nothing. Whenever I called the Citibank before the closure, my actual problem wasn't even voiced to me. 

Only recently, I received a new Citi card sent to me back in XX/XX/XXXX, tried to activate it and realized I no longer have an account! That's how I learnt what happened. This is understandable on a global scale of things, banks decided not to monitor people 's accounts anymore and they don't go running after them, if they themselves don't make sure to check on their accounts frequently. This is definitely a change in tactics and I don't want to go into things like loss of human value and reduction of care for standard customers etc. I'm disillusioned enough not to have illusions, but I simply do not consider that I should give up and be okay with that. Therefore, the only thing is left is to present things as they are and hope that on individual basis, some little insignificant improvements can become precedents of better customer care. 
To give you a wider context of specifically my situation - this was my only US account and I no longer can open a new one indefinitely. It will make it harder for me to organize my life, my moving when I move back and even opening a new account.

I currently have {$260.00} negative balance on my account before it got closed. All this is just simply the result of 12 $ accumulating on top of each other and then giving be debts while I could not access my account from overseas. I called the bank and said i was ready to resolve the issue, pay the debt and have my account reopened. They said I was on time to do that because there is 30 day period after the closure when customers can still send a request to reopen. I asked them how I could pay the money if I was overseas - they replied I had to go in person to the bank and pay or send a check in the mail. I replied that I was overseas ( hence the issue! ) and I can not mail a check because it would take months to arrive, if it arrives at all. On top of that - since my only account has closed Citi checks should be non-operational too! They adviced to ask a friend to go in and make a payment on my behalf and ask to reopen my account. I bothered my cousin who is in LA, he drove a long way to find a Citibank from where he was, only to be told that I had to be there, or on the phone so they could accept his payment. When I called the bank and spoke to them saying that I'd like my cousin to pay my debt and send a request for my account to be reopened - they said it was impossible, because I had to be there in person to sign the document of the request!!! So catch 22. I asked the manager of the branch to find out if he could do anything, like have me send a letter of authorization, or do anything else, that could verify me - he said he would try, but called back soon saying he could not do anything if I wasn't there.

So, I had to just give up at that point.

With this letter, I'm asking you to please consider 2 things as the bas of this complaint : 1. In the era of remote financial operations and pandemic - asking someone to come in person to sign a request to reopen the account is at least ridiculous and at worst and deepest almost touches basic rights issue.

2. I have tried my best to resolve this issue, offered everything, tried to cooperate, talked to maybe 5 different customer care representatives - they all seemed puzzled but in the end uninterested to go extra mile for someone so " small '' like me. They receive hundreds of similar calls a day and they just simply do not want to bother. Now I'm finding this a core issue and stagnation of a system, when pandemic can slow down and fail operations of systems but customers are expected not to " slow down '' or " fail '' as if we are not humans and we just sit and demand things without working hard for other systems to be maintained. This case should be an example of simple unflexibility and unwillingness during pandemic, when the whole world is suffering and flexing. 


Best regards, Filmmaker, journalist, XXXX XXXX.

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