Consumer complaint received 2022-02-19
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Trouble using your card — Can't use card to make purchases
Company: CITIBANK, N.A. (VA)

On XX/XX/XXXX, my wife and I attempted to make an online credit card payment using our Citi card for {$1500.00}. After entering our information correctly, the website became unresponsive and did not provide confirmation that the payment was received. The next morning, on XX/XX/XXXX, my wife and I confirmed that the intended recipient had not received the payment. We then called Citi and spoke to a customer service agent, who was unable to find any pending transaction for that amount. This agent told us that there was no problem with the account, and that we were free to try again. 

Upon going back to the payment site and resubmitting our information, we received a message from the website that our CVV code was incorrect. This message was not accurate we confirmed that the CVV code on the website was correct ( of which we have documentation ). We called Citi again and provided our credit card number to the phone navigation system, and this time we were directed immediately to the fraud alert department. A new agent told us that Citi had locked our account because of suspected fraudulent activity. She unlocked our account, and our third attempt to make the online payment went through without any further issue. 

This is a repeated issue with Citi- in the 15 years my wife and I have been customers of Citi, we have repeatedly had similar issues with large transactions being flagged as fraudulent by Citi ( most recently on XX/XX/2019 ). Therefore, my wife ( who was formerly a senior executive at one of the top five banks in the country and is an expert in banking regulations ) and I pressed the agent for the reason why the transaction was rejected and our account locked. The agent told us that the system had flagged the transaction as fraudulent because I had not entered the CVV code correctly. When we told her this wasnt true and that the information had been entered accurately, the agent began providing, one after another, other explanations why our account had been blocked e.g. the transaction amount was too large, the transaction was outside of our normal pattern of activity, the transaction was suspected to be counterfeit, etc. The agent could not explain why any of these flags triggered in our specific case, nor why she didnt provide these alternate explanations in the first place- instead providing them one at a time after we were unsatisified by the reasons we had already heard. 

We pointed out that the only indication we had there was any issue at all was a false message from the website that we had entered our security information incorrectly. We received no communication from Citi directly to tell us that our account had been locked. When we asked the agent why, she first told us that we had not kept our contact information up to date, and that she had no email address listed for our account. I confirmed that I had received an email from Citi only two days earlier ( on XX/XX/XXXX ), but had no email after either of our first two payment attempts telling us that our account had been locked. The agent then confirmed that she did have my email on file after all, and could not provide any explanation why the system had not sent me an email to tell me that the account had been blocked because of suspected fraudulent activity, as was required by law. 

Citis policy of flagging transactions as fraudulent and aggressively locking customers accounts without notifying the customer is clearly designed to minimize Citis potential losses to fraud at significant inconvenience to their customers, in violation of the law. Further, the agents repeated attempts to shift the blame to our actions were clearly designed to fraudulently deflect Citis culpability for the event.