I have posted here before and read hundreds of complaints about CitiFinancial, part of Citi Group, et al. I also have a vehicle loan through these people. I needed a truck for my small business and none of our local banks would lend at the time, so my own bank referred me to CitiFinancial.
Trying to deal with these people is beyond absurd. I have had this loan for my vehicle for 8 months now, always paying long before the due date and making additional principal payments. Like others in here, I find it strange that most of my money does nothing to the balance, and here is what I just found out.
Here in NC they can charge up to 30% for any loan, basically, under the law. At the time, Citi offered car loans at rates of 13% to 30%, and I was granted their lowest rate, which was 13% (I was supposed to feel good about this). However, I have never paid such rates in my life, and I have owned over 26 vehicles. I had to have this GMC truck to help my business exist. What I was told up front and read in their details made me think I would do this and simply pay additional funds on the principal to wipe out the debt before the 42 months of my loan. I saw nothing sneaky at the time, until after we signed the papers.
To date, Citi still refuses to show my wife as co-borrower on the loan, yet they demanded that she sign contract documents to finalize it, and she lost work to do this for them. We had copies of the initial basic documents, but to date we have never received any formal loan documents, as they promised would be mailed to us. We now only get a one-page statement monthly, and that is that.
However, Citi not only calculated my monthly loan payment based on this 13%, but also, and this is what they are not telling people (if you pay additional on principal like we have been), for the time between when they issue your statement and when it is received back with your payment, they also charge a daily interest rate on top of that. This is what should be criminal to be able to do or get away with, since they already calculated an interest rate to base my 42 months of payments on this vehicle. I can see where this is getting many people caught in a credit trap, and it is wrong. We did one more test this month, sending over $200.00 more than normal, stating on the invoice and check that it was to be applied to principal, but Citi seems to disregard this each month.
My payments with interest are supposed to be $339.00 per month, yet we pay up to $600.00 per month at times. In doing so, we notice that Citi shows an even higher interest charge for the period, so it effectively eats up the additional principal amount we have been paying, and there is no effect on our loan as there should be. As an example, last month we paid $200.00 extra to be applied to principal. The normal payment would have seen about $169.99 in interest applied from the base payment, but by paying more as we did, Citi showed nearly $300.00 going to interest for that month and literally no change to the net balance of the loan. This is setting off alarms for us. How can more interest be charged when you pay an additional principal payment, on a loan where you make the normal monthly payment well within the due date?
Last month, on a larger payment, we noticed almost all of our additional principal payment went to interest. This month we sent even more money and will see if they do this again, taking an even larger amount.
Citi's local loan office will not discuss anything and refers you back to Customer Service. Citi Group / Citi Auto refuses to say anything except that it is a legal simple interest structure. I have never seen anything like this, where you have a loan with interest already calculated to repay it, and they still charge a daily rate above that for the days it takes your payment to get back to them. This needs to be investigated by the Feds too, as it is beyond a banking practice and, in all seriousness, worse than loan sharking from a mobster.
The Feds are bailing out major banks with our tax money, with no open disclosure or accountability yet, and these banks are still doing these tricky things to steal more money from the public wrongfully, as I see it. I wanted to post this because I see others getting caught, not keeping up, as they think they are making their normal payments, while this double-digit interest is going against them daily and monthly besides.
And for those Citi managers reading this: my credit is fine and all three of my major credit card balances are paid in full, so I do not hold over-leveraged unsecured debt. I deal mainly in cash right now in all we do until we see what happens to the economy down the road. I am a small business owner and have been before, and I have owned many vehicles, as stated. This CitiFinancial lending practice is wrong, and you get nowhere trying to deal with their Customer Service department no matter what facts you show. They talk and act like programmed robots with little to say except what is on script for them.
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