Consumer complaint received 2016-11-11
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: NJ
Product: Credit card
Issue: Rewards

Complaint:
To whom this may concern, I am a Citi bank card holder, the type of card I have is the Citi thank you card. One of the perks of this program is that you can earn reward points for eligible spends, which can then be transferred to airline frequent flier accounts or hotels etc. In this program, family and friends have the ability to share points with each other. I had an important upcoming travel, a couple of my friends have chipped in their points, to make this travel possible for me. I logged into my Citi account to transfer the thank you points to my XXXX XXXX account. When selecting the airline I mistakenly selected XXXX XXXX. ( XXXX is an XXXX XXXX company as well, so this was completely human error. ) When I entered my XXXX program account number I did no not receive any pop-up or notification that this account number is not correct. ( I have had this mistake in the past with other companies and always received an error notification, so this is clearly an error on CITI 's end. ) When completing the transaction I was notified that points will transfer to my airline account in fourteen days. A few weeks later, I logged into my XXXX XXXX account only to notice that the points have never arrived. I then logged into my Citi account and noticed that my thank you points were not there as well. After several calls to Citi the representative has informed me, that when points are shared there is a sixty day timeframe to move the points out, or they will expire. I tried explaining to the representative that I have indeed transferred the points within the proper time frame, and followed all terms and conditions. Being that there was no indication, at the time, that the account number was not correct, I did not know that the points bounced back to the account, and that I would therefore need to transfer the points again. I called back and tried speaking with a different agent and was told that the reason why the points never showed up was because I tried transferring it to someone else 's account. When I offered to send them a screen shot of my airline account showing my name with the exact spelling as they have it, they suddenly changed the story to other excuses. I have tried calling a lot of times to explain my situation. I spoke to a supervisor, as well as I have mailed in a personal letter to one of their main offices. I was told that they will look into the matter, but eventually nobody did anything about it. I feel that being that I am a small man against a big company, they can take advantage of me. I did the transfer within the timeframe, and made a human error with the account number, I got no indication that it was wrong, and before I knew it my points were gone. I did whatever i can possibly do within my power, I am not a rich man, and I have literally cried myself to sleep, as the value of these points are equivalent to a ticket of {$5500.00}. I will sincerely and greatly appreciate it if someone can help me get my points back, and defend my rights. I thank you so much for such an amazing agency and taking the time and patients to read my long letter.

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