Consumer complaint received 2024-07-10
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Closing your account — Company closed your account
Company: CITIBANK, N.A. (MO)

I am XXXX XXXX. My father ( XXXX XXXX ) and mother ( XXXX XXXX ) have had a CitiAdvantage Gold Card account with Citibank, NA since XX/XX/XXXX. My father passed away on XX/XX/XXXX. Of course, XXXX XXXX has continued to use the account under the assumption that it was a joint account. Yet, when Citi kept sending cards in her deceased husband 's name, XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ) called the Citi number to ask them to stop sending cards in his name. She had no intention to close the account. When her call was routed to Citi 's overseas call center, the agent confused her by rushing to close the account. This is when we learned that it was not a " joint account '', but rather XXXX was the account holder and XXXX an additional cardholder. 

So, Citi 's agent closes the account immediately and this causes all credit card statements and online access to their account to stop too. XXXX XXXX asks what is owed so she can send a check, which she did to pay off the account. Unbeknownst to widow XXXX, Citi had caused a {$1.00} cent charge to be assessed to the closed account for interest. As if that was not unscrupulous enough, Citi then tacked on a {$30.00} late fee on the account and sent it to XXXX XXXX XXXX to collect on a {$31.00} amount that it generated after closing the account and while they left all of the cardholder 's relatives in the dark as to anything related to the account. 

In an attempt to alleviate XXXXXXXX XXXX XXXX about her account being closed ( and prior to Citi 's XX/XX/XXXX surprise collection letter ), I called Citi to request online access or paper copies of statements so that XXXX XXXX would have them for her records and tax purposes. After being bounced around from the offshore agents to different departments at Citi ( forced to re-verify the account information, SSNs, etc. each time I was transferred ), I landed at the Citi Probate Dept where I was advised that the account was closed with nothing outstanding, so XXXX would have to fax a request for statements along with more proof of identity within the written requests. We did so immediately. 

Several weeks after sending the faxed request, widow XXXX received in the mail the requested statements a cover letter addressed to now-deceased Dad XXXX XXXX XXXX Citibank NA dated XX/XX/XXXX, in which it claim astonishingly claimed that Citi was owed an outstanding debt of {$31.00}. When I checked the statements that were never sent to the family of XXXX XXXX or viewable online due to the account closure, I discovered that Citibank had snuck this de minimis interest charge of {$1.00} to the account and then ballooned it by over XXXX to make it this contrived and eggregious {$31.00} debt. 

Obviously and predictably, the Citibank Probate/Estate Department knowingly and with utter disregard sent this reasonably requested packet of recent account statements with a COLLECTION LETTER to the widow, causing her panic and fear and even tears. As her son and being a transactional lawyer, I felt like this should be easy to resolve with a call to Citi. Since doing so last Friday, I have been bounced around from Citi 's overseas agents to their US agents, from one department to another ( Estates Team, Internal Probate, and other names used ), and eventually to someone that appears to have been with XXXX The lengthy ( hour-plus ) effort to navigate Citi 's labyrinth looking for someone at Citi to do the responsible thing and zero out the account while reversing the collection orders all led me to be transferred a man at XXXX XXXX ( ID XXXX ), who was rude throughout. Though I had verified the account and the private information about my father to establish who I was and that I was in fact speaking on behalf of the estate for my father 's account, he asked for even more by insisting upon knowing the date of death of my father. i do not retain that so I immediately searched for it. After a minute of looking while strongly suggesting that he in the meantime work on closing the collection effort so we did not waste everyone 's time exposing Citi 's misconduct more publicly, he got angry and then stated " you have exceeded the allotted time to verify the account '' - notwithstanding the fact that I had given him the SSN, card/account number with security code/DOB, etc. Conveniently for him, he terminated the call a couple of minutes before XXXX pm when their offices closed for the weekend. So, I was not able to get anyone at Citi or XXXX on the phone until this week. 

Upon calling today to the XXXX number that Citi had given me ( XXXX ), a nice agent " Precious '' was not finding the account by any of XXXX XXXX 's personally identifying information or the account number. After much time looking, the signal dropped and the call disconnected. So, I called back and got another nice person, who too could not find the account. So, I called the Citi Estates Team number and got a woman named XXXX. She could not do anything on the account and suggested I contact XXXX, so I reiterated that I had called them on the number I got from Citi, and had been transferred to them directly from Citi. Plus, when I called the number on the XX/XX/XXXX collection letter from Citi, it had a fax dial tone ( multiple attempts made ). So, this person transferred me again to the " Probate Specialist '' at XXXX who again was not able to find anything with my father XXXX 's Citibank account information. 

Because I have now wasted hours of time and endured the pain of many days of anxiety by my beautiful mother, I am just redirecting my time into this complaint, which I will also attach to a letter to Citi to put them on notice of their harrasment, abusive debt collection practices, shady interest/late fees on this closed account of a deceased cardholder without regard for the widow and family dealing with Citibank 's abuses. Citibank should immediately remove the charges its processes affixed to a deceased account holder 's ledger after telling the family that the account was closed with no amounts owing, plus what I suggest below.