Avoid Citi cards if you hate bad customer service
I’ve been dealing with fraudulent charges on my card for months now, and in the meantime I’ve had to make payments on this balance. I had a similar issue once with Discover and they corrected it immediately. With Citi, it’s been a months-long ordeal. Finally they sent me a letter showing a scribbled signature on a receipt (not mine of course), and told me they would not be refunding my charges. Here’s what I sent them:
I have emailed several times regarding the charges on my card ending xxxx. I am very unhappy with the customer service provided thus far. I have only received responses regarding the smaller of the two fraudulent charges on this card, and the response I received was that you deemed the charge valid. Allow me to explain the nature of this fraud:
1) I haven’t used this card since April 2009; in fact, it has been put away inside a box in a drawer since that time.
2) In May 2009 two charges appeared from some place in Spain that appears to be a furniture store, after some searching on the internet: $xxx.xx and $xx.xx; these were accompanied by a foreign transaction fee of $xx.xx and a finance charge of $x.xx.
3) I was not in Spain at the time; I was in Indiana. This can be corroborated by evidence of passport stamps, plane tickets and activity on my other Citi card which clearly shows charges on the date in question – 5/23/09 – in Indiana.
4) In a letter I received detailing your determination that the charges were indeed valid because there was a signature, said signature is a) not my signature, and b) as previously stated, I was not in Spain, and therefore it would be physically impossible to sign a receipt.
Given the clear and plain nature of this fraud, I am requesting an appeal of your decision and that you:
1) Immediately freeze this account and issue a new card in order to prevent further fraud (I was never given notice you would be doing this)
2) Refund all charges listed above, in addition to the subsequent payments I have made on this balance.
Thank you for your attention to this issue.
What do you think? Strong enough? Too angry-sounding? Maybe it only sounds angry in my head, because I am actually pretty angry about this.