pritomd

Got a card yesterday, activated via the sticker phone number. Accessed online account today, said I could still activate, so I clicked activate. Every time I go to my home page it still says I can activate, no matter how many times I do it. I call customer service, they same I'm activated despite what the page says.

So I can still activate and it looks like the website doesn't think I'm truly activated, but I actually am. However, it's not letting me do certain functions on their site, such as view new documents and request a credit line increase, etc, and I think it's b/c it thinks my card isn't active.

Is it just me? Is it cause it's the weekend? What is it?

MDtR-Chicago

I activated an additional card on the website earlier this week. Seemed to work fine. But then about 2 days later, I got a strange e-mail in monospace font verifying it.

So weird. But I guess it went through fine?

kebosabi

My experience with activating it online (I've done it so many times because of the poor quality build of these Citi cards that it's not even funny) is that it does go through, but Citi ends up calling you several days later with a "fraud warning" to verify it was indeed you that did the activation.

From Citi's POV, they still don't trust the internetz.

pritomd

So I made the post on the 18th around 5PM...I just got bombarded with 7 emails all sent at the same time (8:23AM on the 19th) that were in response to my online confirmations...I guess it WAS just being a bit slow, heh. Same monospace font.

Happy

Trust me, AMEX has the same issue. I have activated a SPG online. In fact AMEX actually allows you to book hotel even before you receive the physical card. I noticed the available credit line stuck at the initial number allowed to book hotel, NEVER got updated to the actual credit line. Waited a week, nothing changed. Called and found out the card was never activated. Rep told me to do again - nothing changed. So I activated it via phone and Voila, the card was really activated this go round.

From that point on, I ALWAYS activate cards via phone and never have any issue like activating online would have. These days, most activations are automatic even using the phone. Though occasionally you would still be directed to a human being - this usually happens, at least based on my experiences, when there are 2 different accounts from the same phone number but they are being activated different time - the 2nd one would get you to talk to a human being to activate it. This seems to be AMEX unique. Citi system does not really care.