Consumer complaint received 2016-10-23
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: MA
Product: Credit card
Issue: Customer service / Customer relations

Complaint:
XX/XX/2016, my credit card, which had a travel warning and which I have been using when I am in XXXX, for the past 5.5 years was blocked for a {$7.00} purchase, at XXXX XXXX. It was a customary monthly charge and my balance was no more than {$100.00} out of {$2500.00} available. 

I thought the problem was with XXXX and proceeded to hire a cab to go grocery shopping. Having spent 1.5 hours in the store and unloaded the card at the cash register, I faced another charge decline. Since it is not safe to walk around with cash in XXXX, I had only {$10.00} and could buy nothing. And so I hired a taxi and went home with no food. The taxi cost me {$12.00}, the whole enterprise 3.5 hrs of wasted time. 

Having arrived home, I discovered an email from Citi, asking me to confirm that the declined purchase was mine. I did as requested, got a message that my card was unblocked. Then I received a phone message, asking me to call Citi Fraud Department. I did, but the automatic system refused to recognize the case number given to me again and again, and again. And it gave no such an option as talking to a human being. I wrote Citi. As usual, received a promise that somebody would contact me. I wrote to a contact person at the Executive Office - XXXX XXXX, who has been as unhelpful as anybody can imagine and then some more. As usual, there arrived her encrypted reply XXXX we are writing to confirm that we received your recent concern XXXX No indication of what concern or when it will be addressed, no understanding of the fact that a cc blocked in a foreign country is an emergency. No surprise either. 

XX/XX/2016 XXXX XXXX replied to another XXXX recent concern XXXX a few month old in reality, which she has refused to grasp - a dispute, in whose resolution Citi refused to follow their own dispute procedures. Since XXXX XXXX and other Executive Office employees refuse to separate issues and even accounts, this complaint has a lot of evidence for the dispute incorrectly resolved, about which I filed a separate complaint. 

For the next 10 days, I had been writing to XXXX XXXX, Citi Cards CEO, explaining, pleading for help, demanding help I have written messages on the so called secure boards, I emailed and faxed to XXXX XXXX and to XXXX XXXX, whom I inferred to be the person in charge of the SD Executive Office ( my inference stemming from the fact of another protracted conundrum that was finally resolved by her ). And wasted many hours of my time and over {$100.00} in phone bills on trying to unblock the card. Citi customer service kept telling me either that my card has no problem, or that they passed my message to the Executive Office. No replies from XXXX XXXX, until XX/XX/2016. No replies from XXXX XXXX until Friday XX/XX/2016, but XXXX XXXX 's empty reply - we are working on your recent concern -was not about the Simplicity card, with which the present complaint is concerned. 

The record of my written attempts is attached to this complaint along with some responses I received on the secure message boards, one of which acknowledged, post factum, that the problems of my card decline stemmed from the fact of my travel warning being lost/discarded/not noticed by the system. It was not the first time that Citi was having computer problems, nor the first time that they refused to listen and to escalate the problem to the people who could resolve it. A few empty replies that I received from Citi can not be quoted, because Citi does its very best not to permit any records into the open. They encrypt even such idiocy as XXXX we have received your recent concerns and are working on them XXXX 
Have received no replies of any kind from Fraud Department, no phone number to speak with somebody in the Fraud Department. Spend hours on the phone, trying to reach the person in charge of the Fraud Department in the USA. PLEASE SEE FULL ACCOUNT ATTACHED

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