Citibank Finance Charges…
To Whom It May Concern:
My account number is XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX and you owe me a refund of $70, plus accumulated interest charges — totaling approximately $75.
I recently performed my annual reconciliation and review of all my credit and banking accounts, including my Citibank Visa, and discovered that you charged me two separate late fees in error ($35 each) on the statements ending 5/17/2002 and 6/18/2002.
For the past three years the due date for payment of the minimum amount on my Citibank Visa has been between the 10th and 15th of every month, and my electronic payments have automatically been sent to arrive within that timeframe. However, on the statements ending 5/17/2002 and 6/18/2002 Citibank arbitrarily bumped the due date to the 6th and the 8th of the following months, respectively. After that, due dates reverted back to fall between the 10th and 15th of each subsequent month, as normal.
While the grace period of the two months in question was exactly 20 days, which certainly fits the 20-day grace period policy stated on the back of each statement, a long-term pattern had been established with the account that allowed a 24- to 26-day period in which to pay the amount due, a time period in which I have consistently paid electronically and on time.
I believe that the practice of establishing a pattern of due dates, encouraging and accepting electronics payments, and then arbitrarily changing the due date in order to make automated payments fall outside the grace period in order to assess a late fee is deceptive. I also noticed that according to your quarterly filings with the SEC that income gained from interest and late fees of the North American credit card division increased during the first two quarters of 2002, and the required loan-loss reserves associated with those increased interest and late fees also went up accordingly. This leads me to wonder to how many other Citibank credit card customers you have knowingly and wrongfully billed late charges.
Please post a refund to my account immediately!
Thank you.
[Note: not to mention that the due date on the printed statement is written in one of the smallest fonts on the page, half the size of the others, a fact that occured to me after the letter had already been sent.]
haha… sounds classic
I just cancelled my Citibank account. I made the mistake of taking a balance transfer offer at a low rate. But now instead of paying off my other new purchases (that are a higher rate), they apply everything to the low rate advance. Then they tell me they didn’t deceive me. Goodbye Citibank.
We’ve had a very similar experience with our Wells Fargo MasterCard. A few months ago they sent us a “borrow $12000 and pay no interest until October” offer. Three actually wasn’t much fine print on the offer, but we read what was there. We called to confrim the details with a person and were assured that it was what it sounded like. We even asked “Is there ANYTHING else I should know about this?” and were told there wasn’t. We usually use a different credit card and teh WFargo is our backup. On a recent vacation we ended up using the WFargo card when our primary card suddenly stopped working (yet another sordid tale of credit card company foul-ups). In any event, now that we’ve actually (gasp!) used the WFargo card to make a purchase they’ve started hitting us with interest on the $12k loan. And applying our payments are being applyied to the loan, not the purchases, so they’re hitting us with finance charges. Or trying to. We refused to pay. We called, told them that we had done our due diligence, that we had been assured there were no tricks, that we didn’t care WHAT it said in the fine print of our regular cardholders agreement we had verified and been assured that there was nothing else we needed to know. They have credited our account for the finance charges and for the interest on the loan. And In our gratitude for their correcting the situation we’re closing the account. There are too many credit cards out there who want my business. I won’t waste any time with one that screws up.
Since Citibank sent a response, I am closing this for comments. If you have anything you’d like to add, click the link and read the response before commenting. Thanks!