Update: A low-level Jacksonville, Florida-based Citi customer service rep telephoned me six days after my blog post to say the company was sorry. She had not read my post and was simply working off a lead from the @Citi or @AskCiti Twitter team. There was no explanation for the Target incident, no resolution to protect against future problems (i.e., Citi would initiate a call to my cell phone to see if I was using my card at a particular merchant) and an offer of 5,000 AAdvantage points as a consolation prize. I told the rep I was in the process of changing my autopays to American Express and would need the $85 Citicard annual fee refunded to keep me from canceling. “Only a supervisor can approve that,” she replied before ending the call.
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Among the more embarrassing experiences in life is having your credit card declined during a business dinner or at a busy check-out line.
That embarrassment is compounded when your card is in perfectly good standing — no outstanding credit balance or history of late payments.
Citi, which issued my Platinum Select AAdvantage World Mastercard, had no qualms about rejecting the $588 in back-to-school purchases we attempted to make at a Target store in Westchester County, NY, today.
The cashier was not prompted by Citi to ask me for identification, due to the size of the purchase.
No request was made to call Citi’s toll-free hotline to answer a security question.
The purchase was simply refused, leaving me red-faced, my kids puzzled, the shoppers behind me miffed, and the cashier with a belt full of apparel that either had to be purchased or put back onto racks.
I paid with my American Express card.
When I called Citi’s 800 number, the “fraud specialist” told me there had been a wave of large-dollar fraudulent transactions at Target so the bank was protecting itself by rejecting my purchase.
Hmm. The same thing happened to my wife two weeks ago at an Esprit store in the Wrentham (Massachusetts) Village Premium Outlets.
Citi clearly doesn’t want my wife and I to use our credit cards — the same cards that costs $85 per year and allow us to earn American Airlines AAdvantage miles for purchases. The bank’s fraud prevention tactics are abhorrent, making it very clear to customers that providing them with reliable service is not its first priority.
We all know credit card fraud is rampant. But there are better solutions than alienating a customer who charges tens of thousands of dollars a year, yielding healthy merchant fees for the bank. And Citi is actually good at this high-tech security stuff.
Citi was one of the first issuers to imprint customer photographs on cards. The bank could promote any number of opt-in security techniques — PINs, biometrics, furnishing government-issued IDs, etc. — to guarantee customers will be able to use their cards wherever and whenever they want.
Instead, the Citi approach is to err against issuing credit for legitimate purchases and then beg for forgiveness after the bank leaves a loyal, paying, law-abiding customer in a lurch. It’s no wonder Citi ranks ninth worst, just ahead of HSBC, in the JD Power and Associates 2010 Credit Card Satisfaction Study Rankings.
The only way I will remain a Citi credit card customer is if I receive an apology and refund of my annual fee. Oh, I’d also like CEO Vikram Pandit to take my daughters back-to-school shopping.