Consumer complaint received 2024-07-31
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Closing your account — Company closed your account
Company: CITIBANK, N.A. (CA)

My primary Citibank credit card account was closed without warning or notice on XX/XX/XXXX. I contacted customer service about this sudden closure, and they informed me that because XXXX payment had bounced over the course of 6 months, that Citibank decided to close my primary credit card ( which has a credit limit of approximately {$30000.00}, and had a current balance of XXXX {$4000.00}, a card I have been cultivating for many years to improve the credit limit ). 

I informed them that I felt this was a severe and unreasonable move by Citi, as not only had I made immediate corrective payments to those bounced payments when they occurred, but I have been a loyal and even vocally-supportive Citibank customer for well over a decade and have almost never so much as missed a payment. I informed them that I saw that the bounced payments were connected to an external account I do not normally use for payments of my credit cards, as I select my Citi Checking for all card payments. Why this external account was used by Citi to attempt to pay the cards when I had plenty of money in my Citi Checking account. 

I had informed the customer support representative that I had since delinked that external account so that there would be no further errors in Citi 's transfers for payments to my card. Even after discussing all of this with the Citi representative, they stated that they could not start an appeal until I had a paper letter in my hand from Citi ( which would take XXXX business days! ) with the stated reasons of the accounts closure, even though they had literally just read the letter to me. I informed them that waiting XXXX business days with my primary card closed would be detrimental to my ability to perform my regular purchases and negatively impact my life in a profound manner, as it is the card connected with my utilities, my healthcare, my insurance, literally ALL of my main avenues of purchase for necessities. I also had been making great strides at paying down my carried balance on this card ( from $ XXXX down to < {$4000.00} ). They told me they still won't file the appeal till I have the paper. 

The following week, my XXXX remaining Citi cards were also canceled ( the larger of the XXXX having a credit limit of {$10000.00}, and also a card I had cultivated for many years to build the credit limit to improve my XXXX XXXX ). I was shocked by this as those cards had no issues I was aware of in the many years I had them. I contacted Citi again on XX/XX/XXXX to ask them about this as well as another attempt to appeal the first card 's closure despite Citi still not having gotten this supposedly necessary letter to me. The Citi representative informed me that these other XXXX cards were also closed because of the first card having the XXXX old bounced payments ( that were immediately remedied ). 

Since Citi is where I do the vast majority of my banking, these card closures constituted over {$35000.00} in credit limit being taken away, almost all of my credit card purchasing power ( I have a backup card with XXXX for emergencies that has a very low credit limit ). I had informed the Citi representative that Citi arbitrarily closing these accounts ( for distant and minor issues that were immediately fixed ) is having a catastrophic effect on my ability to pay for my every day basic needs like paying for insurance and groceries in order to support my family. I told the representative that I still hadn't gotten the letter, which they again read to me on this call. The representative then decided that we could file appeals for all three closed cards. The representative helped walk me through the process each appeal, providing information to show that I do have sufficient income to continue using these accounts. I also made a point to mention that the account Citi had changed the payment source to ( the external account ) had since been disconnected so that there will be no future bounced payments. 

On XX/XX/XXXX I was emailed by Citi, informed that the XXXX appeals had been denied, even though the problem account was disconnected and I have sufficient income and I have a very good credit history. And again, I have even been paying down my carried balance significantly recently. 

On XX/XX/XXXX I finally received the initial letter for the first card 's closure. 

Since those accounts have been closed by Citi, my credit score has dropped dramatically ( from XXXX to XXXX ), and in an attempt to be able to pay for utilities and insurance and other basic needs, I have sought other credit cards and I have been rejected by credit card applications for cards I would likely have been easily approved for before this decision by Citibank XXXX 

Summary : The decision by Citibank to close all three of my credit cards based on two old bounced payments that were immediately corrected is not only poor practice, it's unethical. I have demonstrated good credit history, sufficient income, and regular commitment to make improvements on spending and responsible financial decisions.