Consumer complaint received 2020-06-12
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: CA
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Fees or interest
Sub-issue: Problem with fees

Complaint:
Hi, The issue I want to raise here is the refusal of Citi bank to credit back ( refund ) my annual fees that they promised to refund me. 

I had a Citi / XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX Credit Card which carried an annual fee of {$50.00}. On XX/XX/XXXX, I was charged the {$50.00} annual fee for the period of XX/XX/XXXX to XX/XX/XXXX. I called Citi Credit Card department ( henceforth referred to as " Citi '' ) around XXXX XX/XX/XXXX to see if they could waive the fee off ( they usually have different deals to waive fees off ). They did provide me a deal, but I refused since it was not a good deal. So during that call, the Citi rep asked me to call back later to check for a new deal. 

Again in XXXX I called back again ( around XXXX XXXX I believe, but don't remember the exact date XXXX to check for a new deal. Since there were no new deals, I asked the rep to cancel my account. Before canceling the account, I asked her about the fees and she said that the fees would be refunded back to me at the end of next billing cycle. Therefore I asked her to cancel my account. She canceled it and told me that the negative balance of XXXX {$25.00} ( at the closure of my account, it had a negative balance ) would be refunded back immediately and the {$50.00} annual fees would be refunded back at the end of next billing cycle. But to be doubly sure, I called back again a few minutes later to make sure that my fees will be refunded to me. The new rep on the line told me the same thing and said that the negative balance of XXXX {$25.00} would be refunded back immediately and the {$50.00} fees would be refunded back at the end of next billing cycle. 

Within 5 days, I saw my ~ {$25.00} back in the account. But even after waiting until the end of next billing cycle, I did not receive the {$50.00} fees back to my account. So I started contacting them ( around late XXXX ). But due to Covid-19 the wait times were long and after several attempts ( including once waiting for almost 4 hours on the call ) I could not get hold of anyone. Then I found about their in-app message support system. So using the Citi XXXX app I contacted a Citi rep on this issue and they replied back saying that the fees can not be refunded because I closed the account more than 37 days after being charged the fee! I tried contacting them again in XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX, and different reps ( a few in XXXX and one of them in US ) always told me the same reason for not refunding the fee! 

This is ridiculous since during my cancellation call ( in XX/XX/XXXX XXXX the Citi rep never told me that and instead assured me the fee would be refunded. Even on my second call that same day ( card cancelation day in XX/XX/XXXX ), a different rep assured me that my fees would be refunded. But because I have no proof of the same, Citi is refusing to refund my {$50.00} fee! I would have never canceled my card if the rep had told me that day that the fee would not be refunded. Now after just using the card of about 2 months, Citi has charged me an entire year 's worth of fee. They promised me to refund back the fee on cancelation, but now refuse to refund me my fees! 

The big problem here is that, in such cases the customer never has proof of what was conversed in a call and therefore has no way to prove it. And that way, Citi can keep refusing to refund fees to a customer and the customer would become powerless, without a way to get their money back. On one hand a rep can lie to you and then days/months later another rep will say something else and you would have no way to prove what the first rep told you. 

The sad part for me here is that I have been a long time Citi Credit card and Citi banking customer. I have 2 credit cards and a bank account as well and yet they lie to their customer and refuse to refund them the promised fees. 

Please help! 

Thank you!

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 monetary relief