Consumer complaint received 2017-06-26
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem with a purchase shown on your statement — Card was charged for something you did not purchase with the card
Company: CITIBANK, N.A. (CA)

On XX/XX/XXXX, we received an email from Citibank stating that a suspicious charge made with our Citibank Costco Anywhere Visa at a XXXX store in XXXX, California had been declined. As soon as we saw the email, we immediately called Citibank customer service and verified that the attempted charge was fraudulent ( we have XXXX XXXX service, so we would n't have a reason to shop at XXXX ). We also went on-line and reviewed our recent credit card charges. We identified twenty-four fraudulent charges that were neither made by, nor authorized by, us. Multiple fraudulent charges were made virtually every day, starting on XX/XX/XXXX and ending with the declined charge on XX/XX/XXXX. The fraudulent charges total {$9700.00} and follow a predictable pattern ; One or more small charges for fast food or gas, presumably to be sure that the card was still active, followed by one or two very large charges, at different Costco stores, XXXX, XXXX, or XXXX. Most of these charges were made in XXXX county, more than XXXX miles from where we live. The charges were all made on the same card number. We had not lost the card, and we were using it for normal purchases while this was going on. I would assume that someone obtained the card number, imprinted its information on a fake card, and was using it at stores that had not yet adopted chip scanning technology, such as Costco. We called customer service back, went over the fraudulent charges with the customer service rep, and were assured that we would not be liable for the charges and did not need to do anything further. Several weeks later, when the payment was due, we noticed that all of the fraudulent charges were still on our account. We have always paid our credit card balances in full every month, so we paid {$6000.00}. Which was approximately our portion of the {$16000.00} bill, and called customer service to determine why the charges were still there. The customer service rep said that they had been marked incorrectly by the first rep, so we went through the list again. Once again we were assured that we didnt need to do anything else. Since it had been more than a month and we had received nothing from Citibank, we called again on XX/XX/XXXX. This time XXXX was told that she would have to discuss it with our initial account investigator. This person, if they exist, appears to be very difficult to reach, and to have no interest whatsoever in contacting us, as we have never spoken to them, despite attempting to do so at least a dozen times. When we called back on XX/XX/XXXX, we were told that the account investigator was not available and that the dispute had been denied, meaning that we owed the {$9700.00}, plus interest. This did take us by surprise. We filed a police report with the XXXX XXXX county Sheriffs department, who sent an investigator to our house, stated that we werent the first people that this type of fraud had happened to in this area, and said that she had suspects. We appealed Citibank 's ruling, which Citibank had never bothered to inform us of, let alone send to us in writing, even though that appears to be required by the FCBA. We sent three appeal letters, as well as the police report, which were received from by Citibank on XX/XX/XXXX, XX/XX/XXXX, and XX/XX/XXXX. The first two letters were received by Citibank, but went unanswered. The third letter, which referenced the relevant parts of the Fair Credit Billing act that Citibank appears to have violated, did receive a response, apologizing for the delay in their response, crediting us back {$460.00} in interest that they appear to have illegally collected while investigating our claim and failing to notify us of the results of their investigation, and stating that the card had an encoded chip, and we still had it, so we must have made the charges. We had explained in the three previous letters that, as far as we had been able to determine, none of the places the card was used had yet began to use the chip reader. As I stated above, we didnt make or authorize any of the twenty-four disputed charges. We have perfect credit, no criminal records, and a healthy balance sheet. One of us is a XXXX XXXX XXXX with a XXXX XXXX company and one is the XXXX of a XXXX XXXX. We do not have the time, energy, or motivation, to attempt to defraud Citibank. At this point, we are also genuinely curious as to why the Fair Credit Billing act does not seem to apply to Citibank. We would also like to point out that both the XXXX XXXX County Sheriff 's investigator, and the Costco representative who helped us retrieve the list of purchases made fraudulently on our card ( mostly gift cards and big ticket electronics ), agree that this was fraud. Our credit is important to us. My wife is in the process of raising money for her business, and we are looking at refinancing a second home, so we have been making the minimum payment of about {$220.00} a month for the past eight months, paying more than {$1500.00} we do n't owe At this rate, we will pay off the fraudulent charges in approximately 24 years.