GadgetFreak

What's SM?

mia

This is only a guess: Simon Mall Gift Cards(2017-2018)

MaxVO

I have never been able to use a new Citi card at a B&M retail location after placing a large purchase notification. But recently a new Citi card worked at SM without notifications.

asdfghjk

We got a call from Citi fraud regarding a purchase that We made. We did not pickup the phone and forgot to call back. The purchase was approved. Citi closed the card after a few days.
1. Will I get my signups bonus? I just completed the spending requirements.
2. I am thinking of calling them back to have the card reopen. If it is reopened, will this affect my sign up bonus?

Thanks.

MaxVO

You will not get spend earnings or bonuses, if the account is closed before the end of the billing cycle. Reopening the account is worth a shot, but will not guarantee smooth sailing.

Brooke.E

Over the past few years, between my husband and I, we have had multiple calls from the Citi fraud department that have seemed like fraud themselves. I am actually starting to get quite irritated. What is happening is that they call ~3 months after one of us has opened a new card to try and verify if we did indeed open the new card. The major problem with this is that they are calling from a number that is different from what is on the back of our cards and they can barely speak English. The first time this happened my husband told them that he would not verify anything over that phone call as they were asking him for personal information and he had no way to verify that they were actually with Citi. It would have been incredibly foolish of him to give personal information over the phone to someone he could barely understand and over a phone number that he didn't recognize. Instead, he told them that he would call Citi back using the number on the back of his card to verify any necessary information. After he hung up with that person he did as promised and immediately called the number on the back of his card. It turned out that it was Citi that had called and they had already cancelled his card because the agent he had just spoken with decided that someone else had indeed opened the card. He gave Citi all of the needed information and we had thought the problem was fixed. Unfortunately, within the next hour the fraud department proceeded to also cancel all other cards affiliated with my husband: our business card and my personal Citi card (he was an authorized user). When I noticed that my Citi AA Exec. card was cancelled I was lucky enough to get a great person on the phone who helped resolve this all for both of us but it took a very long time for her to sort it out. I pointed out to this agent that my husband did exactly what he should do given the circumstances and that their fraud department had been the ones that were acting suspiciously. I voiced, that in my opinion, Citi should cancel anyone's card who does comply with requests for secure information over a suspicious phone call as opposed to trying to reach out to Citi to verify the authenticity of the phone call. Blindly giving your personal information out over the phone is foolish. She agreed that we absolutely did the right thing and admitted that she would also have thought the call we received was spam/fraud.

Since this first occurred years ago, we've now gotten the same type of phone call each time we've opened a new account and always about 3 months after opening (we had one today). Even though I now know that Citi is doing this, the phone calls still come off as suspicious and I am extremely uncomfortable giving out any information (they've always been different phone numbers and the person has always been difficult to understand). Despite the fiasco the first time, I will continue to insist on calling them back using the number on the back of my card. Thankfully, we've not had our cards cancelled again and instead they've respected this request and not jumped to conclusions. I fully appreciate when banks take extra steps to assure that we as consumers are protected and obviously that is what Citi is trying to do here. Yet, I cannot figure out for the life of me why any competent fraud department would see anything to suggest that these applications/cards were not actually opened by us. I do not feel that we've had an abnormal number of cards opened and closed with Citi. We are not churning our Citi cards but we have changed the cards that we've decided to hold because of either changes in their products (for example, bonus spend categories) and/or our spending habits. Moreover, they are making these phone calls about 3 months after the account opening at which time we've already spent thousands of dollars but more importantly we've already been paying the balance in full and on time every month. If somebody else had truly opened these cards in our names, why in the world would they have paid every bill in full and on time??? Also, the information on our applications all matches. The phone numbers, e-mails, addresses, income, etc all match. If they pulled the IP address of all of our previous Citi apps, it would be the exact same for every app. At the time that they cancelled my Citi AA Exec. card on the occasion explained in the first paragraph, we'd been using that as our primary card for at least 3 years and paying it in full every month. How can they possibly have thought that someone had fraudulently opened that card?

Is this normal behavior from Citi? Do they sometimes make these calls even when there is not necessarily any obvious sign of fraud? Wouldn't it be more secure and seem less suspicious for them to call with an automated message requesting that we please call the number on the back of our card? I'm not a fan of automated calls but I would also think (or at least hope) that most people would be suspicious of the calls that we've received (unidentifiable number and person) so it seems that would be the better option here.

cheaptom

Yes.

Suffer through the 2-minute call and confirm your phone number. Enjoy the bonus miles.

mia

Yes, this is a normal Citi procedure. Extensive discussion last year in this thread:

Citi AA cards: All (Platinum, Gold, Executive; Business) 2018

akr1970akr

Wow that is a deranged story, but I can totally believe it is happening at Citi.

Brooke.E

That is the problem, the questions they are asking involve more secure information than just a phone number. It is information that someone could use to steal your identity. We don't know and can't confirm while on the phone that it is actually Citi. This has absolutely nothing to do with bonus miles nor being bothered by a 2 minute phone call. I would have no problem with Citi doing these checks if they would use a listed phone number (which my phone would identify as Citi) and representatives that we can understand.

cheaptom

Yes, I was half kidding when I wrote that. In my experience, they verify the name and address on the account application. They send a text message with a code. I read back the code, and that's that. If they were asking you more personal questions, like your SSN, then that's certainly different and more personal than what many others of us encounter.

Brooke.E

My husband said that the questions today were basic information like you've described but that has not been the case every time. The one representative stated specifically that they wanted to verify ALL of the information that we provided on our application. Perhaps that representative would not have actually asked all of the application questions and they simply mis-spoke or didn't understand what they were saying but we didn't allow the conversation to go far enough to find out.

I do really appreciate you and others letting me know that these calls are common place. Now that I know that, I will try not to be so paranoid in the future...

cheaptom

Happens to us all, and you just get used to it. I was concerned the first time, because the call came after I had the card for about two months. I remember asking, "I understand that you want to verify that I truly applied for this card. But why are you verifying NOW? Why let me open the card, spend like crazy on it for two months, and THEN ask to verify??" They replied with some scripted answer like "For your own protection."

The timing of these calls is the part that still makes me scratch my head.

phltraveler

This happened to my parents, about three months after they opened their Double Cash at the end of 2017. Asked some basic questions, texted a code to verify phone, and that was that.

As @cheaptom said - more baffling was the timing. The answer of the rep was a bit more substantive in that they had identified a trend in applications using stolen information (e.g. SSN/identity) and wanted to double check that it was actually the cardholder applied before Citi was on the hook for more fraud and the cardholder was on the hook for a chargeoff of account that wasn't actually their fault.

ynsep

I just tried to make a purchase of 500 at a dept store today. My newly approved TY Premier was declined, had to call in but ran into the classical "no landline to verify" problem. Gave them my account number for other banks but they couldn't verify me either (I am about to move to a new home so Citi has my new address and I am in the process of updating my address for other non-Citi accounts). The customer service rep said they will be sending me a letter. What happens from there? Will it happen every time I try to make a larger purchase? Seriously thinking about cancelling my card right now even though I was planning to put my furniture purchase on it for the sign-up bonus.