I had the same thing happen to me.

Situation:

I called in (under my dads account) trying to lower the cash advance limit from whatever it was down to $1. After answering all the security questions and being bounced around to multiple CSRs, they finally said that the card is now locked and can only be unlocked by going into a back and requesting a cash advance and showing ID. I suspect it's because the original CSR got spooked when I was supposed to be a 60 year old guy, but sounded more like a 20 year old guy. Anyway, I thought it was rather ridiculous that the entire point of the phone call was to lower my cash advance limit so I would never get hit with one, and instead being countered with having to go to a bank to request a cash advance if I want to continue using the card. Of course I was a bit pissed at first, but ultimately, we had just opened the card to get the 50,000 miles initially and hadn't really planned on using it anyway.

Moral of the story:

we never went to the bank and the card has sat dormant for the past 4 months. Maybe one day if we're looking for some time to kill, well go to a bank...maybe. There's a nice way to fund citi accounts initially with a barclays card. And with the rather sizeable credit limit on that card, that would be an easy free one-way to Japan. So perhaps we will take a trip to the bank after all...