Complaint Review: Citibank - New York NY

As of last year, I experienced repeated problems with billing disputes with Citibank Costco Rewards.

On disputes I had filed, Citibank was processing disputes incorrectly. If I filed a dispute, they were crediting the dispute to my account and stated the dispute was resolved. I assumed they were following up with the merchant to verify the validity of my disputes. Instead, they were issuing me credit, they were following up with the merchant, and even if the merchant stated they disagreed with the dispute, Citibank was leaving the credit on my account. And, they went ahead and paid the merchant as well. Some of these disputes were well over $100. Then, without my knowledge, they were coding the disputes as misrepresented that were paid out twice. This lead to my account being closed despite an excellent payment history. They closed the account within days of issuing my Costco rewards money, nearly $1000 for the year. Fishy.

About the time this happened, online dispute paperwork e-mailed started disappearing. I contacted Citibank to discuss the problem, and customer service stated other people had complained about online dispute paperwork disappearing. Same with cardholder agreements that had been requested.

I began requesting copies of all my dispute paperwork from Citibank billing disputes by e-mail and by phone. Some paperwork was received but the vast majority was never sent despite repeated e-mails, phone calls, and an e-mail conversation with high-level management. The majority of the paperwork sent to me wasn't even processed correctly. On several disputes, they coded the disputes incorrectly, processed them as defective merchandise when they were coded as goods not as expected/received. For example, I disputed two restaurant charges because the merchant failed to properly credit my account for burned pizzas. Obviously, a pizza can't be defective. Defective is not the same thing as goods not as expected received. And, Citibank never provided the merchant with my name. So they had no idea who the customer was. The merchant ended up issuing a refund on both charges after I figured out what had happened. This was the trend on nearly all of my disputes.

When I began reading the dispute notes internally from Citibank, the write-ups were not even coherent and were wrong. Come to find out, Citibank has outsourced all of their dispute process overseas. The least they could have done was send me follow-up paperwork during the dispute process. I would have happily contacted the merchant to help resolve the issue or would have sent supporting documentation. I was told that because of the dollar amount of the disputes, they felt like it wasn't worth their time to follow up with me. Seriously. Quote directly from an employee in the Office of the President in South Dakota.

It has been over a year now since the problem began, and they have still failed to reopen my account despite combing through my dispute list, independently contacting merchants to find out what was received on their end, asking them to rebill me for specific disputes that I obtained a direct refund from the merchant on, and showing them paperwork that the merchant refunded me personally or directly to my account. They also have failed to send me all the dispute documents as requested. All dispute documentation has been requested, including the merchant's response. . .

Incessant rebilling problems include ranging from rebilling incorrectly to failing to rebill. The online dispute history rarely matched the actual dispute process or paperwork sent, too. I have screen prints of everything.

They repeatedly sent out contradictory documentation on their rebilling process and made contradictory statements over the phone. They cleared up most of these rebilling problems once I alerted high-level management with the company, but there are still a couple not processed correctly and no attempt has been made to-date to rectify the problem. 

If you have had a similar problem, I would strongly advise filing a complaint with the CFPB, your state attorney's general, and the attorney's general of South Dakota. And, the BBB. I would also document everything you have in writing via e-mail, keep track of your phone calls, and make screen prints of everything online. Make sure you ask for all dispute documentation including the merchant response. You'll be shocked at what you find if they actually manage to send you the documents you requested.