Consumer complaint received 2024-07-18
Product: Checking or savings account — Checking account
Issue: Managing an account — Fee problem
Company: CITIBANK, N.A. (SC)

CFPB complaint -- against citibank -- I have had an absolutely infuriating and disappointing experience with citibank since I became a member in XXXX. 

-- Only very recently in XXXX, I learned that there has always been an option for customers to convert a more expensive checking-account type to a basic-account-type that has no fees or much lower fees than {$25.00}. I had no idea about this before. Citibank does not advertise that it is possible to downgrade an account to one with lower monhy-fees, and no employee before XXXX ever offered it to me. I am shocked at how incompetent +ignorant all the citibank employees have been that I have dealt with. 

-- Back in XXXX, I did a direct-chat message with live citibank employee while logged into my account. I asked the citibank worker if there is any way to avoid the monthly fee. not a single citibank worker offered to me to change my account type to a basic no-fee type. Why the XXXX not??!! 

-- Shockingly, the only thing the citibank worker suggested was that I close my account altogether. Are you XXXX kidding me?? Is this what they call customer service?? A customer asks for help, and a bank employee says to just close the account altogether?? 

-- CItibank policy is supposed to be the following, no matter what account type a customer has. A new customer will not be charged a monthly service fee in the first month that they open their account, nor for the following three calendar months. 

-- I opened my citibank account in XXXX. So citibank should not have charged me mnthly service-fee for XXXX, XXXX, XXXX, or XX/XX/year>. However, citibank in fact charged me monthly service fee in XXXX. I had to contact citibank and ask to have that fee refunded. 

-- Later in XXXX I went on the citibank website and tried to make a virtual appointment with a banker, but the appointment-scheduler did not work. 

-- On XXXX, I logged into my citibank account and saw a cash-bonus offer for existing customers. It required me to enroll in something called Enhanced Direct Deposit, which was simply setting up an ACH transfer US {$250.00} from an external bank account. 

-- First of all, in the offer plain-terms, they simply state that a customer must be enrolled in Enhanced direct deposit, and must perform an EDD of US {$250.00} each calendar month, and that is it. That is all the requirements that citibank states in the regular EDD offer/advertisement for a customer not to be charged the monthly-service-fee. 

-- There is zero mention that the customer has to be in Simplified banking. *If there are in fact more requirements to avoid the monthly-fee, Citibank needs to state this in plain terms in the offer/advertisement at first sight. it is dishonest, fraudulent, and unethical of Citibank to hide such a massive supposed requirement of the EDD-to avoid-monthly-service-fees-offer. 

-- Reading the fine print. In the terms +conditions for Enhanced direct deposit, it states the following : " Account monthly service fees and non-citi ATM fees are waived for customers in the XXXX private client, XXXX or Citi priority relationship tiers during the calendar month. '' I have attached a screenshot. 

-- On XXXX, I successfully enrolled in the EDD offer. I then immediately set up an EDD of US {$250.00} through the citibank website, from my external bank account. this EDD posted/cleared on XXXX. recall that the terms+conditions stated that as long as a customer gets an EDD in a calendar month, the customer will not be charged a monthly-service-fee for that month. so I expected the XXXX monthly-fee to be automatically refunded to me. 

-- On XXXX I logged into my account and saw that, nope, citibank still left the XXXX monthly-service-fee charge without reversing it. I then contacted citibank through live-direct-message. I had to beg a citibank worker to refund me the monthly-service-fee for XXXX. 

-- I also asked the worker if he could refund any of the previous months ' service-fees to me. The worker refused and said he did not have th authority. So I asked if he could transfer me to a supervisor, someone that does have the authority. The rep transferred me to a supervisor named " XXXX '' that was beyond rude n unhelpful. Not to mention, " XXXX '' the supervisor kept lying to me. He kept insisting that the EDD is only available to simplified banking customers. I have the whole entire text of the convo saved. 

-- I kept saying that this is not true, I know for a fact that the only requirement for a customer to avoid the monthly-service-fee is the EDD. 

-- I kept asking and begging him to refund any previous monthly-service-fees before XXXX, as a matter of good customer service. Citibank has basically been stealing this money from me {$25.00} every single month since XXXX. What the XXXX " service '' is citibank providing for me? They are providing nothing. I am bestowing them the favor of using MY money to make them more money. We all know for a fact that citibank uses fractional reserve banking to loan my money out to other people. For who knows how many iterations? Just like all banks. 

-- '' XXXX '' kept refusing and kept lying about the citiabnk account requirements. 

-- I asked XXXX to transfer me to his supervisor since he doesnt have the authority to refund anything else. 

XXXX XXXX for some reason said that he doesnt have a supervisor or something like that. What?? That is absolutely ridiculous. An employee doesn't have a supervisor? Is XXXX the CEO of the company? XXXX also kept insisting that the " system '' decides whether a customer can get a refund and that no human can decide. He kept writing this phrase over n over again, " the system decides. '' This is another reason I asked if he can get his supervisor, someone higher up. Someone that can override th system and issue a refund. XXXX continued to lie and say that there was no other supervisor, and that there was no one that can override th system to give refund. 

-- What in the XXXX?? What th XXXX is going on over there at citibank?? Are we supposed to believe that machines n autobots are running the whole entire citibank company?? And that there is absolutely no way that humans can make decisions? Are there really no humans that have authority over the machines? Or is XXXX just being an XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXXXXXX? 
-- XXXX the customer-service-rep supervisor then did something incredibly rude n disgusting -- he hung up on me. in terms of chat. He ended the chat completely. Without answering any of my questions, and certainly without helping me. 

-- Later that same day XXXX I logged back into my account. I saw that even though I had an EDD transferred into my account for the calendar month XXXX, BEFORE the date of monthly-fee to be charged, citibank had still charged me the monthly-fee {$25.00} for XXXX. As I'm sure you can understand, this infuriated me. 

-- Again I contacted citibank through live-direct-message-chat. I asked the worker to refund the XXXX fee to me since Citibank never should have charged me in the first place. The XXXX citibank worker then *LIED* to me n said that even though I had done an EDD, I still would be charged the monthly-fee unless I had switched to simplified banking. The worker absolutely refused to refund the monthly-fee for XXXX. 

-- So I asked the worker to convert my account to Simplified banking. Indeed, when I logged out then logged back in to citibank,, I saw in my Citibank account main page, there was a little notification saying " welcome to simplified banking '' inside my account. Surprisingly, I was able to access the same 2nd live-chat-messaging and was able to continue that same conversation. 

-- Later that same day XXXX I received an email with the heading " Your request is complete '' which said in text " we've completed your request to convert your relationship to simplified banking. '' -- However, even if my account-type had not switched over, meaning if my account type were still in any citi relationship tier, citi relationship package, XXXX, etc. 
In the terms +conditions for Enhanced direct deposit, it states the following : " Account monthly service fees and non-citi ATM fees are waived for customers in the XXXX private client, XXXX or Citi priority relationship tiers during the calendar month. '' I have attached a screenshot. 
This means that citibank should NOT have charged me the monthly service for XXXX. I am very disappointed to see that citibank still charged me a {$25.00} fee for XXXX. I was hoping that a few days later citibank would refund the fee since I met all the qualifications to not be charged. No such refund happened. 

-- This also means that citibank should NOT have charged me the monthly service for XXXX. Since I performed the Enhanced direct-deposit-procedure after the XXXX service fee was charged, they should have automatically reversed it.