Consumer complaint received 2024-10-16
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems — Problem with balance transfer
Company: CITIBANK, N.A. (GA)

Citibank advertises a Citi Diamond Preferred Credit Card that offeres 21 months of 0 % interest on Balance Transfers. I believe this program should be considered " Bait and Switch '' and/or a fraudulent offer. 


I've had several credit card and checking accounts with Citibank over the last 20 years, all used with complete compliance with their borrowing and paymet terms and conditions. I also maintain credit and checking accounts with several other major U.S banks including Citi, XXXX XXXX XXXX  XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX etc . I also have checking/moneymarket accounts with XXXX XXXX and XXXX. Finally, I'm an XXXX XXXX XXXX  XXXX XXXX. All of which is to say that I'm extremely well educated in the application, underwriting analysis, and offering of credit products to U.S. consumers. 


With this particular Citibank offer the application, credit analysis, and loan amount offer are all made via Citi 's automated marketing and application systems with no information provided to the consumer on how, why, or how much the actual loan offer will be until the automated system completes the decision and issues a credit card. In my case, and from what I've read on the internet about several other consumers that applied for this program, the offers this program makes are all under for amounts of less than {$5000.00}. When doing a balance transfer offer, a consumer is typically doing it to lower their interest rate on the full balance of another line of credit in order to have more if not all of their montly payments go toward principal reduction rather than the interest earnings of the bank they're transferrig the balance to. 

When I recieved a credit line offer of only {$3000.00} with 0 % interest for 21 months, I called Citibank and explained that I had much more significant credit line availability with all the other banks I work with but those banks only made offers for 12 to 18 month periods of 0 %, so I applied to the Citibank program because of it's 21 month 0 % period. Citibank 's customer service representative and manager 's response ( whcih is on a recorded line at Citibank ) was that there was no one at all, " not even the CEO of Citibank '', that could re-evaluate the amount of the offer the automated system made to me, and that regardless of what a human underwriter might determine, the program does not allow for a credit line increase greater than the one the automated system generated until 6 months later. So essentially, even if my credit profile would justify a credit line far in excess of the one provided by their marketing/application system, that amount of credit would not be available until 6 months after the " 21 month at 0 % '' offer started, thus making a higher offer of 0 % credit only available for 15 months. ( strangely, even my current Citi Costco Card has a credit line of {$11000.00}!! ). 

Based on this, I believe Citibank 's 21 % balance transfer offer should be consiedered " Bait and Switch '' at a minimum, if not completely fraudulent because of the tiny amount of credit it has pre-programmed it's automated markeitng system to offer.