asdfghjk

Does it affect your chances of getting approved for new Citi cards? Thanks.

GH83

From my experience and those of others in the Citi AA thread, they will not ask you why you have multiple cards. They will simply ask if you opened the card in question and then to confirm a few transactions. I wouldn't worry about it at all.

asdfghjk

Thanks. I just called Citi. They just wanted to confirm that I opened the card.

LWT3

Citi just locked me out of my account after two failed login attempts. Most banks give you more tries than that. At a minimum, it would have been better if, after the first attempt, a message had popped up saying that one more failed attempt would result in locking the account.

azepine00

I wish citi fraud prevention was a bit more sophisticated.. some individuals of questionable moral character managed to charge $1000+ to my card at several grocery stores in TX, AZ and CA over 2 days and it never triggered any alerts..

mikesyr18

Sorry about the fraud charges; however, the fraudulent charges wouldn't be an issue if you've noticed them and told Citi in a reasonable time period

In my experience Citi is quick to remove the charge, reinstate the credit line, and then you can move on with your purchasing after a new card is send via next day air to you.

You would rather have Citi let $1,000+ in charges go through than be embarrassed by their sometimes "trigger happy" fraud systems while attempting to legitimately pay for an item.

MaxVO

It's a false choice. Banks with properly tuned fraud detection have neither problem, and Citi has both.

mikesyr18

Yes, but I'd rather deal with the $0 liability fraud and overnight replacement card than a declined transaction.

calmasahinducow

So this is an ongoing issue. I've been a Citi card holder for about 15 years (my two oldest accounts) and I have never had an actual case of fraud on any of my Citi cards. Despite this, my Citi cards, especially new cards get flagged for fraud all the time during the course of normal (i.e. non-MS) use. The Citi fraud system used to function pretty well, I would get a text message on my phone to verify the purchase in case of a fraud alert but for the last couple years this system has not been functional at all. I am not getting any sort of fraud alert via text or e-mail, which makes me wonder how well the system would work in the case of actual fraud. Instead, I have to call in after my card is declined and typically the fraud CSR sends me a text on my phone that I repeat, yadda yadda yadda I'm sure you guys are all familiar with this.

However last week I tried to buy tickets on United with a new Citi AA card (lol I know) and the card was declined. I called in and was told that they couldn't verify my phone number (the same one I have been using for 15 years) and that they would have to snail mail me correspondence that has instructions on how to proceed (presumably it contains some second factor auth to read back to the CSR). It's been a week now, still nothing in the mail and the Citi fraud reps are totally clueless and completely unhelpful. They just stick to a script about suspicious activity and not being able to verify my phone number. Obviously I still can't use my card.

I would be kind of fine with this if I had any confidence that Citi could actually detect real fraud but needless to say I have absolutely no confidence that is the case. Like many of you I have accounts at multiple banks including Chase, Barclays, Schwab, Amex, BoA among others. Every single fraud alert I have received from other banks has had some basis in reality (i.e. the algorithm caught something abnormal about my spending habits), immediately contacted me via text, email or call and resolved the issue quickly.

Citi on the other hand seems to be a complete ....ing .... show that constantly flags on false positives and can't verify their own long standing customers. I have no idea how this bank still has a retail line of business.

Madison Guy

Well, for example, if you have not cancelled all your Citicards, I believe you have just answered your own question here.

acvitale

It might be the Dr.'s office but could be one of the Equifax leaks which are being to show more and more. I had 2 cards not used in months compromised. Our research ended up showing the numbers and my personal information were part of the Equifax hack/leak and were sold on the Dark Web.

It can happen to anyone.

Often1

Your is a one-off experience and may be associated with anything from your very specific spend pattern, the IP adresses from which you access your account online, the manner in which you pay, and so on. There are hundreds of data points in a well-run system.

My Citi experience is the opposite of yours. I occasionally get a text message asking me to verify a specific item, such as an Uber out-of-town if I did not purchase the ticket to get there with the card or did not use the travel notice function. Once in a while, I have received a call asking me to verify certain oddball information from my account.

That's it.

As I understand the software, it is an accumulation of factors which triggers escalating levels of security verification. E.g., text message, phone call, and in your case snail mail. It is not necessarily anything you have done right or wrong and even if you are very careful, all it takes is a card skimmer at some random place.

Because the consumer is protected from fraud losses, consumers tend to only see the downside of anti-fraud measures. But, life isn't like that. If the card issuer is taking all of the risks as it is, you can't expect it to forgo anti-fraud.

If you look at Citi's investor relations reports, you will find that its retail card business is doing quite well.

mia

The nature of security algorithms and processes is that no issuer is going to tell us much about how they work, because that information would make it easier to bypass.

If the number that Citi cannot verify is the one on which you received text messages it sounds as if this is related. The fact that you have been using the number all along isn't important if Citi has only recently implemented a number verification process.

If you look at THIS thread you will see many recent reports that Citi is retroactively verifying the identity of people who opened accounts some time ago. It would appear they have a material problem with fraudulent accounts, in addition to fraudulent use of legitimate accounts.

mikesyr18

This is just one of those dumb things about Citi.

They always have told me they can't verify my phone number when I've called in... But they've also told me I can use someone else's to verify my identity.

At the end of the day, I just realize Citi is the "special" bank (to put it nicely) of all of the financial institutions in this country.

bigshooter