Citibank
Auto Pay Withdrawn Monthly but Card Balance Never Changed

I want everybody to know about this one. Do not use auto pay. Citibank says it's a great way to pay your bill, but they are being deceptive and will rip you off. I am an active duty soldier. In August, shortly after coming home from a deployment, I received a telephone call from a Citibank representative telling me a payment had not been made for that month.

I told him about my deployment and that I could send in the payment with no problem (it wasn't because I couldn't afford to make the payment). Then he said that because of my active duty status, and my having to make address changes every time I deployed, I could do auto pay. He said I could do auto pay for the next 6 months, and during those 6 months it would be interest free, and then by January (the end of the agreement) I could decide whether to continue the auto pay at my current interest rates. I thought that would be a great program. I wouldn't have to worry about my bill getting paid for the next 6 months, interest free.

My first Citibank statement arrived along with a memo saying that $110.00 had been taken out of my bank. However, my statement still had the same balance that it did before the payment, and it had charged me $85.00 in interest fees. I called Citibank. After being connected and reconnected to everybody at Citibank, a representative told me it was a mistake and that she would take the interest fees off, and I should see the adjustment on the next billing statement.

The following month, I received the statement and the memo saying $110.00 was taken out of my bank account. Looking at the billing statement, the balance was exactly the same as it had been in July (before the auto pay started), with another $85.00 in interest fees. It was like they had just photocopied July's balance. I had stopped using the card a year before, and I just wanted to pay it off, so I knew it wasn't because of any new purchases. I called again, and again I was told it was an error: instead of the withdrawal code they were supposed to be using, they had used some incorrect code. They said they would fix it and that all the interest fees from the previous months would be credited to my account. This continued into the next month.

The following month was November, and I received a statement showing that I had to make a double payment because they were unable to receive a payment from October, although again my bank account showed that a payment was taken from it. I called again, and once again the representative said it was a withdrawal code and they would fix it. I told her not to auto pay from my account anymore because it was just becoming more of a problem and I didn't care for it. I said I would send in a check for $222.00, and I did. My December statement arrived and showed several payments were made to my Citibank account, but the balance didn't reflect it. It was still exactly the same as in the previous month.

Finally, I was so frustrated at seeing my Citibank balance remain exactly (to the penny) the same while my bank account was being withdrawn from that I refused to talk to anybody except a supervisor. I told her what was going on and what was promised to me. She was not at all customer friendly. She told me she didn't know why I was promised the auto pay, that I didn't qualify for it, and that I had to have bad credit problems to even qualify. She said my account history (before August) showed I was paying my bill with no problems. Then she told me I had to fax all my billing statements with the memos and my bank account statements to her to show that this issue even existed.

After a lengthy, heated conversation, she also proceeded to tell me that my Citibank account hadn't had any payments on it after August. I told her I had proof showing that $110.00 was being withdrawn every month from my bank account. That woman never even attempted to help me find out why my Citibank account was still showing the same exact balance month after month, with no late fees or over-the-limit fees, just interest fees. Yet she claimed my account hadn't received a payment since August (and this was December), even though my payments never went up to show that a payment wasn't made (with the exception of that one time). My bank account was showing payments being made, and still no help.

I told her to completely close my account, and I told her that every active duty soldier I knew was going to know about Citibank's practices and not to use their fraudulent services. I also told her not to use the auto pay method; in January I would simply send in the payment. Needless to say, nothing I said made a difference to this woman or this credit card company, because I still received the statement and memo saying they had withdrawn $111.00 out of my checking account. They couldn't even tell me where all that money coming from my bank to their company was going. To me, they are as bad as con artists, and I am just sorry I still have a balance left on my Citibank card and that the money being auto paid to them wasn't credited to that balance to pay it off.

If they can rip me off, lie to me, deceive me, and treat me the way that supervisor treated me, they don't deserve to be in business. To anyone who reads this, please take my advice and do not open an account with Citibank. To any Citibank representatives who read this, you people don't deserve people like me who help protect your rights as human beings, and when I'm deployed I won't be thinking of your lives being protected back home. You disgust me.

Company: Citibank
Country: USA
State: Nevada
City: The Lakes
Address: P.O. Box 6404
Phone: 8009505114

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