Consumer complaint received 2024-11-02 00:00:00
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Other features, terms, or problems — Other problem
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: CA

Complaint narrative:
On XX/XX/year>, I attempted to make a online purchase from XXXX 
The website has a security check required by Citibank requiring a code go to the consumers phone number. The phone number which could not be changed was the wrong phone number and I have no access to my old phone number. So I went online to Citibank and changed my phone number. The transaction still would not go through and I called Citibank customer service about the problem and instead of helping me they transferred me to the fraud department. The fraud department is ran by individuals in foreign countries, and those individuals illegally blocked my card, and put a security alert on my account so that I could not get into the account and see any transactions. I kept calling customer service, being hung up on, and being transferred right back to fraud and nothing was getting resolved. Then I got an email that showed that the purchase went throw on my citibank card and I immediately went online trying to see if the transaction showed as pending on my account. Nothing showed. I called and was transferred again to the fraud department who lied to me and said there was a transaction showing, so I hung up and called customer service to verify that with them. I also finally got them to admit that changing your phone number does not go through for 48 hours, so essentially I could not do the verification process with XXXX XXXX and so I know that someone in the fraud department did push the order through because they can see it on their end and they can stop the charge from being declined. Yet a verification is required. I then decided to use another non citibank credit card and to purchase the parts and that credit card went through with no verification whatsoever and generated an email for the sale. I went on the website which has NO contact information and no way to cancel the transaction and no phone or email to call these people to let them know to cancel the transaction. I do not think that this is legal. Then I discovered that Citibank went into the account and and removed the pending transaction after I told them about several pending transactions which should have been taken off a while back. The agent removed every pending transaction including the pending transaction from XXXX XXXX. I called back after that very rude person hung up on me. The person in customer service gave me to a supervisor who claimed there was no transaction from XXXX XXXX, and while Im talking to her the transaction reappeared and she denied it again. I stated to her that I printed the page right off of my account and she basically was very rude and ignored me. My problem with citibank is that I am a good customer paying ontime with good credit and they are treating me like a criminal. Attacking my account by blocking the card, puting a credit alert on my account and block me from seeing my account which they have not removed, and then blocking my phone number so that if I put the creditcard number into the auto attendant to call customer service its blocked and they never answer. Their fraud department is hiring people in foreign countries who illegally access accounts and change important things on the account. This is not the first time dealing with foreigners who have access to my account. They commit fraud constantly. Its the same customer service people who are the customer service for multiple companies who are doing this and the executives of the credit card companies are ignoring it. This the 4th time that I have had someone do this to me. They should not be removing any pending charges and then putting them back on the account and then lying about it. They also lied about my phone number. While the customer service stated that they called the fraud dept and told them my number changed, they claimed it was the wrong number even when I gave them the old phone number they lied and claimed it was not the number on the account. Since it is my account and I am the one who gave the phone number to citibank in the first place and then called them to change the number, they should not be lying about those two numbers and claiming that I am not the account holder. I had several representatives blatently lie to me when all I was trying to do was change my phone number so the verification would go through on the purchase.

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 non-monetary relief