Home Depot / CitiBank
Promotional Balance Allocations Extremely Burdensome

For the last 3 or 4 years, we have used Home Depot credit cards extensively for home renovations, amounting to several thousand dollars in two accounts. We take advantage of the promotional periods of no interest a lot. I am meticulous about making sure balances are paid within the promotional period to avoid retroactive interest.

Until the last few months, when making my payment online, I could mark which balances I wanted my payment (anything above the minimum due) to be allocated to. That feature is now unavailable, and you have to call every single time to request payment to be allocated to promotional balances. It sounds easy enough, but it's not even part of their automated system. You have to force the call to a representative, make a payment over the phone, and then that representative transfers you to another department to specifically allocate the payment over the minimum due to the promotional balance. It takes about 15 minutes each time I've had to do this.

I also have to make sure my husband is available on the call because he's the "primary" (even though I'm named on one of the accounts). It seems like a major scam to have people who aren't paying attention just make a payment and not notice how it's being allocated, so they will miss their promotional period expiration dates and have a bunch of interest charged. This needs to stop immediately and give us back the ability to allocate the payments ourselves online. We've been told "they're working on it." This would be a simple fix. Home Depot and Citibank have endless resources, so they could make the technology work if they wanted to. At this time, we are working to pay off our balances and will likely curtail our Home Depot shopping down to cash only. We don't plan to give Citibank another penny.

Company: Home Depot / CitiBank
Country: USA
State: Missouri

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