Consumer complaint received 2021-07-03
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: CA
Product: Checking or savings account
Sub-product: Checking account
Issue: Managing an account
Sub-issue: Funds not handled or disbursed as instructed

Complaint:
I opened my Citibank account in early XX/XX/2021, and I have never had the amount of issues I had with Citibank with any other bank my entire life. Every transaction I would make would throw a fraud alert and would lock my account and I would have to call the fraud department to review the account. Depending on the day of the week, their verification system would tell them my phone number was not my phone number and they would hang up on me. Countless calls and hours spent on the phone with them. One week, I was on the phone for 30 hours with them. The. The following morning, it took the person on the phone 30 seconds to unlock my account. These transactions were not unusual for me either. I am building a house and Home Depot was a frequent merchant of mine and it threw the flags. Same with XXXX and my local gas station. Nothing I could do would satisfy their algorithm and I have been hung up on more than my entire life if phone calls by them. I was treated like a criminal as though Im not me by every single person I spoke to. I usually had to call Citi private bank support if I wanted anything to actually get done because they were the only ones who cared. The final straw was when I deposited three checks from my old bank. Two for {$10000.00} one for {$5000.00}. All made out to me. I was on vacation when I made the deposit, and had thought that the funds would be available much sooner than electronically transferring which is why I requested the checks in the first place. But instead they just deposited with a processing hold. Later that day, I got an email stating that one of the checks had been returned, because the payees name didnt match the title of the account which it did, and I was given a receipt of the deposit. So I called and asked them where my check was and the {$10000.00} they said they would mail it back. So upon receiving the letter it stated the reasons again and that I was to bring in to the branch for re-deposit and review. However, the check was not my check. It was what they called a legal copy of my check. However, the account number was missing the last two numbers and the routing number had an extra digit at the beginning. So at this point I was already fed up with Citibank so I called the issuing bank and asked them to just cancel the check and they stated they couldnt because Citibank already cashed the check. At this point I theorized that must be why they changed the numbers on the check. Because they already cashed it and my money was in some sort of a holding account until I went to the branch so thats what I did. I went to the branch and redeposited the legal copy as they instructed. It flagged my account and placed it in a blocked status that I am still unable to have lifted and my account has been closed. So Ive lost {$10000.00} and Citibank says I now owe them {$10000.00} for what, I dont know because they will not provide me statements, no give me access to the messages in my secure inbox in my Citibank account. My only thorny is that the person who compromised my other bank, has somehow managed to tie up my Citibank account. I have a police report but Citibank wont even take that information from me or allow me to see my statements to verify all my transactions were made by me an that my citibank account wasnt also targeted. The person who got into my other bank account has an old ID of mine that isnt expired so they would be able to gain some access and thats what I think has been going on.

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