Consumer complaint received 2023-03-22
Product: Credit card or prepaid card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Closing your account — Company closed your account
Company: CITIBANK, N.A. (DC)

Complaint:
XX/XX/2023 - I made a payment of {$650.00} to my Citi Double Cash Credit Card account from my XXXX Checking account. It took a few days to process, but there was no notification of the payment failing from Citi to me. 

XX/XX/2023 - I logged into the Citi Double Cash Credit Card account and saw that I had chosen the wrong account by mistake. I immediately made a payment for the same amount, but from my XXXX checking account, which the payment was originally supposed to be made from. 

XX/XX/2023 - The account was closed on my end when I logged into the account. At this point, I never missed a payment, and I paid the majority of my balance off well in advance of the statement being sent, as well as before the due date. I immediately called Citi to see what was going on, and they informed me that the account was closed because of the returned payment. As I mentioned, I was very confused because I gave them no reason to close my account based on my account history. My payment history is attached, which shows my large payments I frequently made to keep the account balance low ; my account also had no late payments. This made no sense for them to close my account, especially after I made a payment and contacted the to explain the mix-up. 

XX/XX/2023 - A letter was issued to me from Citi stating that the account had a return payment and I should " make a replacement payment right away. '' By this time, I had already made a payment and contacted them regarding it. The fact that this letter is dated XX/XX/2023, after I've already made the payment that cleared my XXXX Bank, made me aware of the negligence and poor banking practices of Citi and that they were fabricating a reason to drop me as a customer. 

XX/XX/2023 - I was issued a letter stating that the account has been closed because of the one returned payment. I had to wait for this letter from the customer service department because I was told it would allow me to call back to see if I was able to get the account restored. Once I received it, I gave them a call. They asked for income information to get the account restored. They did not pull a credit report during this call because they said it wasn't necessary, given the prompts the agent had on their computer for the restoring of the account. This information was sent to their team to review, and I was told to wait for a letter in the mail. 

XX/XX/2023 - They issued a letter stating they were unable to open my account because " your credit report showed paid or unpaid delinquent credit obligations ''. They did not pull a credit report to obtain that information and they did not have my permission to do so. Nevertheless, anything there was on my current credit report was there before I opened the credit card with them, so the information they stated in the letter was false, and they truly had no reason to close the account. 

The day I found out the account was closed, which was about 2 weeks before I received notification of the account being closed, I had no access to the account. They made me wait for letters in the mail, as I explained. So when I called them today ( XX/XX/2023 ) to get this account paid off since they were not reopening the account, I was charged a late fee for a payment I had no knowledge of. They did not send me a statement, and I was unable to access the account. I went ahead and paid the account off in full today as well. 

I will be closing any other accounts with them and will never do business with them again. It has been a ridiculous journey with this company and their horrible customer service, having multiple times I was hung up on intentionally, had bad attitudes, not being transferred to managers, and being given the wrong number to speak with agents in the US. This happened more than 5 times on separate occasions.

Company public response: Company has responded to the consumer and the CFPB and chooses not to provide a public response
Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation