Over the phone, Citibank AAdvantage Card offered me a thousand dollar increase, and then arbitrarily changed it to a temporary one month increase less than a week later, without notifying me in writing or by phone. Subsequently, they demanded that I pay the 1000 dollars back immediately and sent me a bill for over $1100 dollars when normally I made payments of about 200 to 250 dollars a month. It then began to assess me fees totaling several hundred dollars over the next 2 to 6 months.
I tried to pay as much as I could, including a total of nearly 600 dollars in June and another total of nearly 1500 dollars during the next weeks.
In late June/early July I was told on the phone that no one at Citibank found it fair or logical for my $1000 line increase in February to have been temporary, i.e. Historically I have had a very good credit rating up to 2002. I was told if I could scrape up about 1300 dollars in July, everything could be settled. I went ahead in mid-July and borrowed that sum from family.
The day after Citibank AAdvantage received a check for over 1300 dollars at the end of June, it closed my account, meaning the card was frozen.
(1) First, I began to be late on my other payments in April and May on other cards as I tried to take from Peter to pay Paul, and to protect my credit rating.
(2) Subsequently, most of my credit cards were being affected by late payments, etc.
(2.5) In June/July, because of the spiraling debt Citibank had got me in, I was considering quitting my job in Mexico and claiming that I was unemployed while returning to the U.S. to look for work. [I have had the CitiAAdvantage card since about 1998 or 1999.] Citibank said over the phone that if I quit work, I would not be eligible. In short, the fees I had been paying for over a year, before I moved to Mexico in summer 2002, were a waste of money. Rather than continuing to pay for the emergency and unemployment insurance on the card anymore, I was forced to cancel this card just weeks before Citibank arbitrarily closed my account under very suspicious conditions.
(3) I asked Citibank in August to reopen a card for me so that I could revolve my credit as they had promised I could do after sending them 1300 dollars. They refused. I was told by a Citicorp employee on the phone that Citibank routinely denies new cards to people with Mexican addresses. My address in Mexico was at the university where I was teaching.
By December I had to quit my job in Mexico and have returned to Texas to (a) work on my debt being taken over with the help of an agency here in the U.S. and (b) find new employment that will help me pay the debt.
Meanwhile, in November I filed a claim against unfair predatory charging, debt, and fee practices by Citibank with John Ashcroft, U.S. Attorney General.
In early December, I reached an agreement with Family Credit counseling and 5 credit cards, including the one with Citibank with about $9000 debt. However, two weeks later Citibank decided it had apparently made a mistake and asked that, on top of the agreed upon amount settled originally with Family Credit counseling, it needed 25 dollars more each month to be paid over 50 months or more.
Meanwhile, Citibank has resurrected a credit card I had closed out nearly 5 years ago and has begun charging me fees on that card since summer 2003. The invoices come with no charges, simply overdraft fees totaling another 200 dollars or so. (I received no bill from Citibank on this previously closed account between late 1999 and mid.)
I think that possibly Citibank is being vindictive because I have raised a flag in Washington DC about Citibank's unfair fees, etc.
Meanwhile, I am unemployed, and Citibank is demanding that Family Credit counseling put pressure on me to pay more than we agreed upon in December.
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