Beware of financing same as cash purchases with CitiFinancial! We bought furniture on 18 months same as cash. Our finance period was up on July 3. We mailed the payment in full on June 29. The payment only had to go 60 miles away from our home-to Columbus, OH. CitiFinancial did not credit our payment until July 8. They then charged us all of the finance charges-over $900. We sent a letter to the dispute department (which was what it said to do on the back of the bill) explaining all of this, but it was disregarded.
Next comes another bill with the finance charges and late charges and interest added on. Again we sent a letter and again it was disregarded. Another bill came with more late charges and interest added on. Then the calls started-messages on the answer machine at least once a day and sometimes more-from the collections department. When we finally made contact with them, they informed us that they could not help us-we needed to contact the dispute department.
We called the number that they gave us for dispute and they claimed that they never got any letters from us. We then had to fax a letter to them and they said they would consider the claim.
Several weeks went by and then we got a letter saying that the dispute had been denied and that we owed the money. As a courtesy, they credited ONE late fee ($29). Actually, we should not have had any fees or interest added on to the disputed portions of our bill while it is in dispute, but they indeed added on fees.
We contacted the dispute department again to try to resolve this, since we paid in full 4 days before the due date. We were offered a deal to split the fees. We contacted a lawyer to see what we could do. He suggested we just pay to preserve our credit. We did not want to do that since we did nothing wrong.
We called the dispute department again and supposedly went all the way to the top of management and were treated very rudely. They insisted that we owed the money because the payment did not arrive in time. They said that the 50% offer was "off the table" since we didn't take it when it was offered. They said if we did not pay in 10 days that it would go to collections and be written off as a bad debt against our credit. We sent them payment by certified mail so that it could be tracked and they would not be able to say they did not receive it again.
AMAZINGLY, our payment was mailed at 3:25 P.M. On a Wednesday afternoon and arrived at it's destination at 10:49 A.M. The very next day!!! Now, if that check took less than 24 hours to arrive, I'm pretty sure that the original payment did not take 11 days to arrive. Oh, if I'd only spent the $3.00 to sent that check certified mail!
Buyer beware! Avoid any dealings with CItiFinancial!
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