Consumer complaint received 2019-12-17
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: FL
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems
Sub-issue: Problem with rewards from credit card

Complaint:
Throughout the course of XX/XX/XXXXand XX/XX/XXXXmy wife and I opened some Citi AAdvantage Platinum Select cards through legitimate promotional offers and honest credit applications. The terms on these promotional offers were clear and applicable to us on every occasion, and through them we were able to earn a substantial American Airlines AAdvantage mileage balance through bonus offers. In essence, we had entered into legitimate contracts with Citi and earned legitimate promotional bonuses through legitimate spending. In short - we had earned these miles fair and square.Two weeks ago American Airlines closed my AAdvantage account without notice and refused to provide any communication with me. Similarly, my wife's AAdvantage account has been locked and unable to use. I contacted their phone line, their AAdvantage email support, and their executive office to no avail. Not a single person returned my calls or emails. It was not until I filed a complaint with the XXXX XXXX XXXX that I received an email from the company's corporate security department, who merely provided me a boilerplate email claiming I had engaged in abuse of their program. I asked for specifics, because I know we have never engaged in abuse with their program. To this day I have not received any specific details about why my account was terminated, though the suspicion is that I had earned too many miles (through legitimate promotions and offers from Citi) and they did not want me to spend them. Since then I have done some research and discovered hundreds - perhaps thousands - of other AAdvantage members facing a similar issue. Accounts shut down, reservations cancelled, and no communication directly from the organization in advance of these events. The airline is acting in a dictator-like fashion and shutting down users for no apparent reason. The sentiment of many of these people mirrors mine - which is that American Airlines is punishing members who utilized credit card bonus offers provided by Citi. The simple fact is that we applied for a financial product under certain terms and conditions and went through a full background credit check and approval process before being approved for this product. We then went through a specific spending process which was reviewed by the bank and was fairly awarded my miles. At no point in this process did we participate in abuse, fraud, or misuse. We entered into a contract with Citi, was awarded miles for meeting certain terms and conditions, and now American Airlines has decided they can take these miles from us.However, because of American Airlines's recent uncouth business practices, we have had the miles we fairly earned taken away from us without due process or explanation. Because of this, it no longer makes sense for us to keep any actives AAdvantage credit cards open as we will be earning miles into an account we can no longer utilize.

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