Consumer complaint received 2025-11-05 00:00:00
Product: Credit card — General-purpose credit card or charge card
Issue: Problem when making payments — Problem during payment process
Company: CITIBANK, N.A.
State: CA

Complaint narrative:
I was incorrectly charged {$21.00} in interest on my most recent Citi Best Buy Visa statement, closing date XX/XX/year>. I have paid enough every month to both avoid incurring interest charges on recent purchases and pay down promotional balances if my payment was applied appropriately. It appears that the Citi Best Buy automated system has been misapplying my monthly payments in a way that unnecessarily resulted in interest charges. 

On XX/XX/year>, I sent several messages to customer service through the Citi Best Buy Visa website. In my messages, I explained the above and requested the following : Please remove the incorrectly charged interest from my account and recalculate and adjust my recent payments. If this issue is not rectified to my satisfaction, I intend to report this unlawful practice to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ( CFPB ). 

On XX/XX/year>, I received XXXX responses from Citibank Retail Services Customer Service. The responses all demonstrate that Citibank Retail Services Customer Service is unwilling to resolve this issue in writing through their secure messaging portal. Each response from Citibank Customer Service ignores my request to forward my message to a supervisor, the legal department, or anyone capable of complying with consumer protection laws. Each Customer Service response instructs me to resolve the issue over the phone, even after I explicitly requested the correct address to resolve the issue in writing and explained that my Citi Best Buy statement states : You must notify us of any potential errors in writing. My statement warns : You may call us, but if you do, we are not required to investigate any potential errors, and you may have to pay the amount in question. 

On XX/XX/year>, I called Citi Best Buy to specify precisely how I wanted my payment for the relevant statement to be allocated to recent purchases and promotional balances because the Citi Best Buy website does not allow customers to precisely specify payment allocation. The customer service agent whom I spoke with on XX/XX/year>, assured me that I can trust the payment allocation options available on the Citi Best Buy website, even though it does not allow me to specify dollar amounts paid to recent purchases and promotional balances. The agent assured me that my payment would be applied to higher-interest, recent purchases before it was applied to purchases with a promotional XXXX  % interest rate. My call to Citi Best Buy Customer Service on XX/XX/year>, lasted XXXX hour, XXXX minutes, and XXXX seconds, and my sole reason for calling was to specify the proper allocation of my payment. Since it is absurd to expect customers to spend over an hour on the phone every time they want to pay their bill and ensure that the payment is applied lawfully, for subsequent payments, I trusted the advice from the customer service agent who told me my payments would be properly allocated if I trusted the Citi Best Buy automated system. 

After I allowed the Citi Best Buy automated system to allocate my payments, I was unnecessarily charged interest because the automated system is designed to steal from customers by allocating payments in a deceptive way that unfairly benefits Citibank. 

If my payments had been allocated to prioritize my recent, higher-interest purchases as promised on XX/XX/year>, instead of prioritizing the advance payment of 0 % promotional interest purchases that are not due for several months, no interest would have been charged. Citibank Retail Services ' automated payment system violates 12 CFR 1026.53 - Allocation of payments, and other consumer protection laws, as a matter of standard business practice.

My secure communications with Citibank Retail Services online Customer Service demonstrate that not only does Citibank willfully steal from customers by intentionally violating Title XXXX Federal Regulations and consumer protection laws, but their online Customer Service portal is also nothing more than corporate sludge that was put in place to frustrate customers into giving up instead of providing actual support and problem resolution as XXXX expects.

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