Funny Stories with Citicards
I personally have 12 credit cards which are issued from major credit card issuers at the United States. My credit cards are from Citi, Chase, American Express, Discover, HSBC, WaMu, Bank of America, National City, and a local credit union. Among the above mentioned credit card issuers, I like American Express and Discover best. This is exactly fit with the result from the J. D. Power credit card satisfaction study. Then the question is which credit card issuer I hate most? The answer is Citi!
Following are some funny stories between my friends with Citi.
1. Citi will reduce your credit limit as a way of saying “thank you”!
My friend Jon has a Citi Dividend Platinum Select MasterCard for College Students for about 3 years. The credit limit was $12,000 before Citi reduced it. He didn’t use it for a while and then received a mail from Citi several days ago regarding his new credit limit of this credit card.
Congratulations, because of your excellent history with us, we’re increasing your credit line to $6,700. It’s our way of saying thank you.
Then he checked his online account and indeed the credit line was reduced to $6,700. Next time when you receive a similat mail from Citi, you will not be surprised. This is a special way to say “thank you” from Citi.
2. Citi will reject your online application 4 times and then send you a new credit card!
This is a really funny story between my friend Dave with Citi. He applied for the Citi mtvU Platinum Select Visa Credit Card online at Citicards.com and didn’t get instant approval. He then received the first rejection letter from Citi regarding this application after one week. OK, he knew his application was turned down by the time he received the letter from Citi. However, Citi sent another 3 letters to him regarding the application. All right, Dave was thinking:” I know my application was turned down, why the hell you sent me so many letters?”
However, after some days, he received a new Citi mtvU card in the mail with a congratulation! Funny?
3. Citi will close your already closed credit cards twice!
This is a true story from my friend Jenny. She has a Citi CashReturns MasterCard for about 4 years. She closed the CashReturns card after the 3-month 5% cash back promotion ended. Last month, she received a letter from Citi stating that her CashReturns card was closed by Citi. The funny thing is Citi sent her another letter indicating that her CashReturns card was closed. One letter is not enough to let the customers know that her/his credit card is closed?
4. Citi will close all your credit cards (all means including your already closed credit cards) in one day!
Chris has a lot of credit cards like I do. He currently has 3 Citi credit cards: Citi Diamond Preferred Rewards Card, Citi Professional Card with ThankYou Network and the Citi Business Card with ThankYou Network. He previously owned many Citi credit cards for taking advantage of the balance transfer offers and sign-up bonuses etc, although he closed many of them including (some were closed more than one year): Citi PremierPass Card-Elite Level, Citi Driver’s Edge Options Platinum Select Card, Citi AT&T Rewards Card, Citi Platinum Select AAdvantage World MasterCard, Citi CashReturns Card, and Citi Dividend Platinum Select MasterCard for College Students. Two weeks ago, he received 9 letter from Citi regarding his all 9 credit cards. All of letters informed Chris that his credit cards were closed by Citi.
This is a very horrible experience. You can’t imagine that Citi will do this thing until you experience it by yourself.
Of course, similar experience will also happen from other credit card issuers like Chase. They increased the credit limit of my Chase Freedom Card from $1,500 to $1,800 and kept sending me email and mails about this really “exciting” news. So far, I have received 3 email and 3 mails about the $300 credit limit increase.
If you have any funny stories with credit card issuers, you can leave your comments below.
(4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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lol. i think most of us have bad experience with one cc company or another. let me contribute my 2 cents. another story about Citi shared by many people is the notorious ‘refer-a-friend’ program. they promise to give you $50 or $100 for referring a friend to apply a Citi card if s/he is approved. they seldom keep their promise. you have to fight a long way to get the bonus or you may just end up with disappointment and give up.
But don’t hype Amex and Discover too much. they are more the same. Amex is very generous about initial credit line and later credit line increase and has the very best customer service; however, their infamous financial review break many loyal customers. Discover, on the other hand, is very strict with new customers. I agree they do business better than Citi/Chase/BofA/HSBC/WaMu…, but for us we are just choosing the less evil for our own interest.
Sander,thank you very much! Credit card companies have to take care of millions of customers. It’s quite understandable for them to make some mistakes.