Consumer complaint received 2020-06-16
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: CO
Product: Credit card or prepaid card
Sub-product: Store credit card
Issue: Incorrect information on your report
Sub-issue: Account information incorrect

Complaint:
Resubmitted REVISION Unable to find previous submission Reason for dispute : At 68 years of age with a XXXX  score of XXXX this is the only account that I have any problem with on any credit report. Lack of availability of adequate available dispute resolution and deletion of my account data has left me unable to dispute this complaint with Sears. 

The five-month long account payment history is a product of erroneous billing and accounting and different summary data reporting to the different credit agencies. Coincidentally all of this has occurred during the Sears bankruptcy resulting in the unavailability of Sears customer service personnel to resolve any dispute. The credit agencies state I must file a dispute with Sears. However, that has been impossible. Even the XXXX XXXX XXXX report simply lists Sears as Out of Business. 

I have found that Sears accounting errors were followed by the erroneous reporting to the credit bureaus which was then followed by deletion of my entire account data and personal information. In addition, it has remained impossible to contact Sears Customer Service to file a despite with. 

XXXX XXXXThis account originated as an in-store credit card granted at the time of a {$27.00} purchase. It was opened during Sears bankruptcy which in retrospect maybe I should have known better. 

The account was set up to automatically pay off the monthly balance from my bank account. Attachments showing that the monthly payment is documented as a Scheduled Payment, however no automatic payments were requested or made. After I received an email XX/XX/XXXX and stating that my account was overdue, I again went online to again configure the account to insure it paid automatically as all my accounts do. But apparently this did not work again. 

XX/XX/XXXX After receiving another email stating delinquency on XX/XX/XXXX Subsequent multiple phone calls with hours spent waiting on hold resulted in only one documented contact with personnel on XX/XX/XXXX for resolution. 
Although Sears customer service agent apologized, he could not explain why automatic payment had not paid the monthly balance. He stated that with paying off the entire {$200.00} balance and closing the account would resolve the matter and it would not show up on my credit reports. However, instead Sears reported inconsistent and differing facts which now shows late payments but with two or three different late payments in different time frames sent to three different  credit agencies. See attached XXXX compared to XXXX XXXX reports. 

Accounts show SEARS/CBNA ( CLOSED ), Account Status PAYS_AS_AGREED, however : XXXX XXXX XXXXand XXXX  shows XXXX balance due XXXX and XX/XX/XXXX when payments were allegedly late at the same time 30 and 60 days but no due amounts are listed. In XX/XX/XXXX and all of XXXX it shows XXXX balance with no payments late. 

In contrast, XXXX is different and shows 30- and 60-day late payments in XXXX and XXXX but in XX/XX/XXXX the balance of XXXX and no lateness is noted. However, the next month of XX/XX/XXXX the XXXX account was noted as now being 90 days late when the balance was XXXX for second month in a row. How does that happen? 

Sears then DELETED MY ACCOUNT, ACCOUNT HISTORY and PERSONAL INFORMATION and all traces of these transactions prohibiting any dispute resolution. Since the XXXX call I have only been able to sign into my account which now only contains my first name and email address ( attached ). All my account history has been deleted. There is no way to dispute anything now. Was that done to cover up all these errors? This is despite my having had good credit with Sears on and off for 50 years XXXX Yet again I spent multiple phone calls and 2 hours on hold attempting to contact a live body through normal Sears customer service phone number to once again query and resolve this dispute without success. That has not changed. I would invite anyone to attempt to contact a live body at Sears yourself. I challenge anyone reading this letter to call Sears customer service and attempt to contact a live person XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX. 

Additionally, any attempt to settle this with the help of the XXXX XXXX XXXX proved to be useless as Sears is still currently in bankruptcy and controlled by a holding company. Attached XXXX XXXX XXXX rating shows that the rating is either A+ or In Bankruptcy. 

In summary, there is no possible way of sorting this out when no one can contact Customer Service after repetitively being on hold for hours. The single customer service personnel that I was able to talk to in the last year could not understand it himself. Being unable to talk to customer personnel again about my account that has been completely deleted simply makes this is a dispute that can not be resolved no matter what I do. 

I doubt I am the only customer with this experience with Sears during the chaos of its bankruptcy. Because I have no opportunity to fairly dispute my account that has been deleted by a Customer Service that is unreachable. I am requesting this inconsistent and erroneous information be removed from all three credit bureaus. I have never had the opportunity to fairly address these errors or formally file a dispute. 

I will get unfairly penalized for actions that I could not have been responsible for or resolve. My credit score should not be lowered because Sears is in bankruptcy and the billing department is in disarray and unavailable to the public, and when I am not able to contact anybody about an account history that has been deleted.

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 non-monetary relief