Consumer complaint received 2024-05-17
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Trouble using your card — Can't use card to make purchases
Company: CITIBANK, N.A. (AZ)

To whom it may concern : Hello, First, let me start off by saying, I love my Citi Costco Card. I enjoy the benefits and ease of tapping/swiping this card. I do have many concerns with the events that transpired with my card and am hoping that by the time you finish reading this letter that you understand my frustration and hope you can put some controls/methods in place in order to ensure this doesnt happen again to anyone else. 

I was out with my Director at a restaurant on XX/XX/XXXX, and was paying for dinner when my card was declined. This was not only embarrassing, but I then had to figure out why this was happening as I had plenty of sufficient funds for the charge. 

I called several times to Citi the day after, XX/XX/XXXX, to try and figure out why my charge was declined. After several attempts throughout the day, I finally got thru, ( 10 calls and several hours later ). In the event that I was calling, the calls kept dropping every time I put in my validation information and constant transferring. 

When I finally got thru and spoke to a person, they did some additional research and determined that I was deceased. As you can see from this letter, Im very much alive. To make matters worse, I received many letters to My Estate at my address asking to call in for payment/balance and other information about my Citi card . 

After finally coming to a conclusion that Im alive, a new card was issued ; however, my cash back rewards were wiped. This was another problem that I had to ask to resolve. After sometime, I had to call back with some follow up questions, and I was told that someone may have inadvertently pushed a button to make this a deceased account. 

To this day, I still do not know what really happened to my account and have not received any additional information from the company. There was no apology, no compensation for the incident and I had to call in during the work week and spend time away from work to get this resolved. 

Feel free to listen to these calls on my account for validation, as all calls are monitored and recorded for quality assurance purposes. 

What I would like to know is what controls do you have in place to ensure this doesnt happen to someone else? 

Is the company requesting death certificates, validating the card number and the name of the deceased? Is the company validating address/social, etc., to ensure appropriate controls are in place instead of just taking the word of the individuals that are calling in? Is there a pop up on the screen that comes up when someone pushes the Customer deceased button? 

While I understand that many grieve at the time of these calls, and people should be sensitive to these situations ; however, I have also lost loved ones and expect companies to request appropriate documentation/verification in order to cancel cards/payments, etc., so that correct cards are cancelled and not someone elses. The issue that I struggle with is that if other credit card companies got wind of my death, it wouldve cancelled all of my other cards and essentially ruining my credit that I had worked so hard to build. 

I hope you will take this letter and request seriously in hopes that you do something about the controls/quality to put in place so it doesnt happen to another person as this caused me a lot of stress and anxiety. These would be the types of reasons that customers do not want a Citi card to use as if there are signs that people do not take their jobs seriously can cause all sorts of issues. I do not know what downstream impacts there will be from this situation and hoping it is minimal because I dont know how much more I can deal with all of this. 


Below is a timeline of the calls and numbers I used. XX/XX/XXXX, called XXXX, seven times. Then I had to call XXXX. The automation system kept dropping my calls every time I punched in my last 4 of social. 


Best wishes, Alive and well! 

XXXX XXXX