Consumer complaint received 2022-07-03
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Getting a credit card — Problem getting a working replacement card
Company: CITIBANK, N.A. (TX)

On XX/XX/2022 I received a text message from Citibank that they thought my credit card account may have had one or more fraudulent charges placed on our XXXX XXXX. We logged on to the Citibank website and went to the webpage where you can identify fraudulent charges. There were two fraudulent charges that we identified using the website. It told us that the card had to be immediately cancelled and we proceeded to call the phone number specified to get a replacement card issued. A support person helped us and told us that a new card would be mailed to us and that we would received it in 6 or 7 business days. She also gave us the new card number over the phone as well as the new expiration date and 3 digit code ( so that we could use this info to immediately update all the companies that do automatic charges to the credit card for various things ). This is where this issue should have ended.

45 minutes later we were notified by Citibank ( by text message ) that a new fraudulent charge had been placed on the new card number. We were confused because we had not given the number out to anyone yet. We called the Citibank phone number for dealing with fraud to find out why this had happened so that we could prevent it from happening again and to get another replacement card issued. The support person seemed confused by this and said that this does not happen very often. She told us that due to automatic controls in place, they could not issue us a new replacement card for 48 hours. We would have to call back.

I called the Citibank security and fraud phone number after 48 hours on XX/XX/2022 to get the replacement credit card issued. I was on the support call for over an hour and the support person kept putting me on hold over and over as if something was not right. Finally after at least 1 hr and 15 minutes on the phone they told us that we would have to wait another 48 hours to get a new replacement credit card number. I immediately asked to speak to a manager. When the manager came on the line I asked why this was happening and explained the inconvenience to us with not having the card available for our daily purchases as well as the possibility that automatic payments may start being charged to the account. The manager said that the lady that had helped me on XX/XX/2022 had made a mistake and did not unlink the old card from the new one. This had allowed a new fraudulent charge to trickle down from the old card number to the replacement card after the old card had been cancelled. In addition she said that she had made another mistake which resulted in us having to wait another 48 additional hours to get a replacement card number. 

I called the Citibank security and fraud phone number once again after 48 more hours on XX/XX/2022. After I was on the support call talking to the agent for another 45 minutes she told me that they would mail us a new card and to expect it in 6 to 8 business days. She also told me that one automatic charge to the account had already been denied. I asked if she could give me the new card information over the phone so that I could make purchases in the mean time and also to update all the businesses that do automatic charges before any more denials happened. She told me she could not do this. She said the best she could do was to ship the card " overnight '' but it may not arrive for 1 to 2 business days. This would effectively be 3 days because tomorrow is XX/XX/XXXX which is a holiday. I then asked to speak to a manager. The manager was of no help. She just told me we would have to wait the 3 days for the card to be delivered and there are no other options. 

I feel that CitiBank is being very unreasonable in how they are handling this issue. They are causing real trouble for me by making me wait a minimum of 7 days to get a new card number. We have been a loyal and good customer for years on this credit card. The security and fraud support team really let us down. The fraudulent charges are of course not Citibank ; s fault or my fault. Fortunately they have a way to efficiently handle this. Nevertheless, the mistakes made while issuing us the first replacement card were made by the Citibank support team employee, yet they are punishing us for the problem by making us wait day after day for a new card. At this point I am not confident that I will even receive a replacement card. I am in limbo not knowing what to do. My only recourse right now is to file this complaint. In this amount of time there will be more denials of payment for automatic payments. This issue has already caused me to take several hours to try to get this issue resolved and it will take several more to clean up the damage it has caused.