I have had my account with CitiAuto since 2005 for my 2003 Toyota Camry. For 2 years I had no problems with anything, but then Citi Auto changed their payment processing and their system, which in turn caused them not to draft from my checking account for 3 months. Citi Auto and I caught the problem, and Citi waived 2 payments and I paid the 3rd and switched to another bank for my auto payment. All went well for another 2 years, until just today, 12/15.
Today my wife called me at work and asked who Santander is and why they would send a questionnaire about their service. She called them and they told her they bought our Citi account in September and we had not made our payment since 9/26/10. I called and checked our account and they were right, it had not come out. Well, my problem with this is I was never notified of my account being sold or that my payments would stop, and it's a week before Christmas and the money I thought was being AUTOMATICALLY taken out was in fact not being taken out.
To make matters worse, I called Customer Service to see what could be done and was told to "be an adult and pay my bills". I asked where the courtesy call or courtesy certified mail was that my AUTOMATIC payments would stop, and was told "they're not in the business of courtesy, they are here to make people like me pay their bills". I work in banking and this was quite frankly the absolute WORST experience with a company, a so-called customer service, and just overall lack of respect for people when the company themselves are the ones who did not notify in any way of what was happening.
The customer service representative who was telling me I have a responsibility to contact and update information asked me my address and had my address from a year ago on file. I gave her tonight, 8:36pm EST on 12/15/10, my address for where I have lived since February and told her Citi Auto sent me a receipt each month. She then went on to tell me I was lying, since I used to get receipts from Citi I should have noticed something and contacted them, but she would not let me finish telling her I just assumed it was either PAID OFF or simply another change in processing. I thought the money was in the account but assumed that it was already taken out, and I have used most of the money for either Christmas or other bills. I told Customer Service that I would let them put it on the back of the loan, but I do not have the money to pay for their mistake. I do NOW, however, realize never to ASSUME that automatic payments aren't automatic, and bank errors cost me at the worst time...
0 comments