Let me start by saying that I have never paid a bill late or missed a payment to anyone, ever (even to and including this day).
For almost three hours today I tried to pay off a 6 mos same as cash account from this company (bought furniture from a store that I won't mention here because it isn't their fault). First of all I take the blame for the following; I waited until 1 day before my 6 mos was up to make the final payment on this account to avoid finance charges of 24% retroactive back to the beginning of the purchase for the entire amount (even though I had made payments and the balance was significantly less now). The story begins there and ends with me having an extreme hatred of this company. I would also like to point out that this date was about a week or more before my statement due date where the minimum payment was $0.
First of all you must enter your account number when you call their automated system and then verify with every person you talk to the following; The same account number, your complete address, phone number, social security number, before they will even talk to you. You have to repeat this every time they transfer you to someone else.
It takes hitting 0 about 10 times to get to a human from thier 800 number.
I was told that the ONLY way I could pay my account off today was to pay $15 for a payment by phone. I have probably 15 other accounts with other companies and have never had to pay them a fee for the priviledge of them taking my money. Even the companies that say there is a fee usually offer to waive it when they pull up my accounts and see my payment history. Also, most other financial entities in this day and age have a website where you can pay.
On my statement it said I could open a checking account at citibank.com and pay my account for free so I logged on to that website and tried to do this. I was not successful. After calling the 800 number on citibank.com I spoke to a very nice lady that tried for about a half hour to help me and repetedly came back on the line to tell me she "was getting the run around at every extension she called". I said "you work for this company and you are having this problem, imagine how frustrating it is for me". I finally just hung up after about the 15th time I was put on hold figuring it was going no where.
While I was sitting on hold I looked up branches and then I tried calling the Citi Financial office that is 1/10 of a mile from my house and was rather rudely told that I couldn't pay there either. I called a Citibank office building that is about 20 miles from my house and ended up talking to the security guard (because pushing 9 for an emergency was the only way I could get a human) who laughingly (nicely however) transfered me to somoene in their building that told me to not bother with the standard CSR's at the 800 number but to ask for a manager, that is was rediculous that they didn't offer to waive the $15 fee for me originally since I was paying off the account.
I called the furniture store at some point in all this and they said they would try to find out for me. They ended up calling back to tell me they had no luck either.
I called back to the original citi financial number, gave them all my info again, asked for a manager and was rudely asked (by the barely english speaking woman) "Why?". I said (angry at this point) "Because I want to". I was transfered to another woman that barely spoke english and I asked her if she was a manager. She said she was "basically a manager" whatever that meant. I told her my entire story and that I wanted to pay this account off today and didn't want to pay a $15 fee. She said they don't "do that" so I asked for her boss. She rudely informed me that it was unnessasary and I should just "suck it up" and pay the $15, "After all, it is only $15". I told her that I agree it is only $15 and that you would think they could waive it this one and only time and let me pay off this account, after all, they were a multibillion dollar financial institute. I was told the following over and over by her;
"I should have planned better and sent the payment in earlier"
"If she transfered me to her boss I was just going to get frustrated and more upset and I would end up paying the $15 anyway so I should just go ahead and make it easier on everyone, quit wasting their time and pay the fee"
"That it was fiscially better for me to just pay the $15 because I would avoid the $61 in interest I would be charged if I didn't pay it"
Repeatedly that "this was my fault and I should be more responsible"
"I needed to realize on a no interest for 6 mos account they needed to be able to make some money on it, so by charging this fee to people it helped them pay for the service"
After this went on for like 20 minutes of her treating me like I was just a deadbeat (keep in mind, I wasn't late, had never been, was trying to pay this account in full) I told her to transfer me to her boss. She kept avoiding it, repeating the above plus many other things that I can't remember right off hand. When I kept demanding to be transfered she finally put me on hold. I expected to get hung up on, she came back after a while and told me all those extensions were busy and she would have someone call me. I said "I will hold" she said "it could be a while", I told her I had all day and if her boss wasn't available to transfer me to someone higher, there had to be someone above her at their desk. So she yelled at me "Ok, obviously there is nothing I can do if you are demanding to go over my head, but you aren't going to hear anything different so I guess I will just quit playing this game with you and transfer you to anyone you want", I said great, transfer me to the highest person in your company that you have a number for. When this other "CSR manager" came on the phone, same accent, same attitude, I asked her if she had heard the way that other woman had spoken to me. She said she hadn't so I proceded to tell her. She cut me off and said "I have had nothing but compliments on this person", basically, informing me that she didn't care (I suspect this woman was not a manger because I find it hard to believe someone that manages people would have such a lax attitude to a very rude person under their watch dealing with customers). By the way, the first rude one was named PAM, (they wouldn't give me any more info for her) her suposed supervisor was JUDITH @ 285-7235, ID # 5PH (I suspect that was probably made up as she kept changing it). I was told that all of this would be documented on my account and if I lodged a complaint they would be able to reference it and find out who I had dealt with. I finally asked where physically this person was that I was dealing with (I suspected India) but was told Canada. I asked if there was someone in the USA that I could deal with since I am in Cincinnati and they are based out of Columbus and this account was opened in Ohio. I got a number (after being on hold for another 10 minutes, I think she was surprised when I was still waiting) to a citibank branch in columbus. She also gave me an address in Columbus where I could overnight a check (before 10am) if I wanted to do that. I said "Great, I will just take it there myself, I am going to be in Columbus tomorrow anyway". She told me that I couldn't go there that there wasn't anyone there for me to take it to. I said "So who will the Fedex guy give my check to tomorrow then?", she said she didn't know, but that I wasn't allowed to go there myself. I got off the phone with her and called the Columbus number. I spoke with a very nice lady in the Columbus citibank office and she told me that she had the exact same experience with citi-financial herself on a car loan and basically there was nothing I could do about it. She urged me to write letters to the company about it.
I ended up calling back in later in the day and made the payment by phone, as Fedex didn't deliver there on Saturday and if they had it would have probably cost me more than the interest I was trying to avoid.
I plan to write to as many people in that company that I can as well as the BBB and the furniture store that opened the account for me. Also as many websites that I can find, I might even make up some flyers and post them on their branch windows every night as well as maybe picketing their local branch to try to help potential future victims of theirs. I understand that there is a a movement towards zero customer service these days, but this experience was rediculous. Another funny thing about all this was that on my statement it offered me a $3500 loan from the local Citi-Financial branch (the same one that wouldn't take my payment because they "weren't able to take payments on this type of account".
I can somewhat understand that this is their fee policy (not agreeing to it, but understand that it exists), but you would think there could be exceptions made for good customers and the fact that I might take advantage of the nearly $7000 of credit they had been willing to extend to me at some future time (the amount they approved me for, I only charged $600 of that originally).
There was absolutely no reason to treat a customer as rudely as I was treated today.
Scott
Cincinnati, Ohio
U.S.A.
0 comments