An open letter to Citi Bank

To XXXXX Citi Card Services Best Buy

From Philip Gardocki, Card holder

Dear Sir,

                This is a letter of complaint on how an issue was handled by your company, Citi Cared Services supporting the My Best Buy Credit card.

                The short of this story is a bill payment went missing and your attempts to recover it.

                As we are still in the discovery process here, not all the details of the missing transaction are known yet.  Rest assured, the money I owe your company is forthcoming.

                As to how your company handles this problem has been horrible, and will certainly lead to a cancellation of my credit card once accounts are settled.  As this is my back up credit card, so you are not going to miss my business much.

                But I also maintain a blog on merry events like this, and this is a great opportunity to add a page of content.  For that I am appreciative.  And you will benefit as it can explain a problem manifesting itself with your company and you can have an opportunity to fix said problem.

                Down to the details.  On 12/6/2015, I made a purchase for $158.99 that was charged to the card.  Around the end of the month we received a bill for that amount.  On 1/22/2016 the bill was recorded as paid in full as a direct transfer from our bank account to you.

                 Around January 30^th or so, I started receiving robocalls from your company.  The caller ID was listed as “Unavailable”.  The calls start with “We are sorry we missed you, your time is important to us…”  Ok, I get this; you are trying to be nice.  HOWEVER, since I actually answered the call, I have no opportunity to interact with anyone.  And since it was a robocall, I hung up long before your message completed. 

                You see, I get these calls all the time.  From scam artists.  They all say it is important that I contact them.  And because you refuse to identify yourself on caller ID only puts you in the scam category.  I am not going to call the number on the message.  I am going to call the number on my credit card.  Which I did.  Not your specific card, because I did not think it was the issue.  My main credit card which is also run by Citi.  And they reported no problems.

                I am doing my due diligence here.  If you had the courtesy of a person calling me, or perhaps a letter.  This issue could have been resolved last week.  But no.  You have to…

                Robo call again and again.

                Did I mention this is for $150 dollars?  What is your problem, do you need gas money for the Lamborghini?

                Eventually, on 2/3/2016, I did call the number on the message, so you could say it worked, except that now I am royally pissed off.  I gave no information other than my phone number and let them work out what the problem is.  They say I have a bill past due, and I agreed to check up on it.  Because hey, I can make a mistake.

                So today, 2/4/2016, I found the bill, with the note on it stating it was paid on 1/22/2016, because my wife is really good with these things.  And I call your card member services again.  Obviously there is a disconnect somewhere, and we have to track it down.  But I am at least acknowledging there is a problem somewhere and it is recorded in you system.  It was mentioned that your payment remittance address was changed.  And that would keep the automatic bill payment from getting through.

                So now the disconnect has been identified.  Don’t you think you are over reacting?  You change your address, knowing it will break any direct payments.  I know you know it because it is written on the bill.  So my payment, which was made in good faith, goes awry and you have the unmitigated gall to sick the hounds on me?  WTF man!  The bill is 9 days late, caused by a situation you knowingly created, and then you charge me and every other direct payment people $35 for it.  How many millions in late fees did you bill?  How much of that have you had to refund?  You wasted my time, your time, you created needless angst, ALL BECAUSE YOU COULDN’T BOTHER TO ACTUALLY PAY SOMEONE TO MAKE A PHONE CALL OR SEND A LETTER?

                Have you checked my credit rating?  Actually you did, just last year.  I’ll wait while you look it up. 

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I am not someone that lets bills slide.  You think you saved money by automating this process.  Your bean counters don’t count everything.  There is a cost for pissing off your clientele.  With me, it’s not much.  You are not going to miss me.  But this will be a blog entry, forever.  I am fairly proficient at Search Engine Optimization.  I can make pages bubble to the top with the right keywords.

Like these:

Citibank sucks.  Robocalls sucks, Unfriendly billing department.  Late payments.