… and a lump of steaming brown goodness for identity thieves everywhere.
My sister was the victim of this. She went to the local supermarket to buy groceries, but her debit card was declined. Apparently, she had no money! How is this possible? Because some fine person managed to get a hold of her debit card number and spend a ton of money at Walmart.
Now, how they were able to charge this large amount at a major dept. store on a debit card they didn’t actually have should probably be the subject of a different thread. But Citibank is the subject of the pitting because of their handling of the situation. First, the ads where this poor guy has his bank account emptied by scum and the friendly customer service lady tells him she’ll put the money back today… pure fantasy. They’re going to be in trouble until the investigation is completed, which could be in about ten days (and there are checks written against the account). But here’s the kicker… the customer service person tells my brother-in-law that it might go quicker if he conducted the investigation himself! So he calls the offending Walmart to see who might have spent this much money, and the lady there tells him “shouldn’t your bank be asking these questions?” I love great customer service like this.
I just recently had a similar experience with them. My wallet was stolen and as soon as I cancelled my credit card (Bank One - who were aces, BTW. Told me immediately that I wouldn’t be responsible for any charges, and that as a courtesy they were notifying all the credit agencies in case anyone was going to try to attempt to establish credit fraudulently in my name) I called Citibank to cancel my debit card.
Well first of all it took me like 15 minutes to navigate the customer service menu to even get to a live person who had to ability to cancel my card, and then (because apparently Citibank is one of those companies who is outsourcing all their CS services to India) the person I finally got was nearly incomprehensible to me. The did not offer any helpful information about what was going to happen next, or even if someone had used my card. I finally asked that and the person replied “yes.” (??!?!?!?!) I said “So what happens with that?” and she said “Call back tomorrow.” Excuse me?! So I called back the next day and got another indecipherable person and started ranting and he said “Please hold” until I FINALLY got someone coherent who apologised and said what the fraudulent charges were and did I want to contest them, etc, etc (which the first person should’ve done, but apparently COULDN’T BE BOTHERED!)
The kicker is, a week later at 7AM when I’m just getting out of bed I get a call from the first person, saying I requested a callback about my lost card. I told them first of all, it was stolen, not lost, and second of all, what the HELL are you talking about? She then went down the list of fraudulent charges and said “so you want to contest these, then?” WHAT?!?! Of COURSE I want to contest those - I told you that a week ago!!!
As soon as that is all credited back to my account my money and business are SO out of there. Ugh - I never in my life have been so disgusted. They must be somehow affiliated with Circut City they are so foul.
Don’t get me started about how they tried to hijack my retirement account from Oppenheimer funds. BAH! Hate!
Actually, I hate to say this, but your best bet really is doing it all yourself. Although card fraud is not the same as identity theft, you can buy ‘identity theft insurance’ which means they’ll reimburse you for the expenses of doing all the work yourself. Washington Mutual offers this for free, but it’s not automatic - you have to apply.
To Citi’s credit, they’re pretty much the only ones who have account-monitoring automated alerts (sent as e-mails and/or as cell phone text messages) that are triggered by specific events that can let you know if your account is at risk. You can have alerts sent if a transaction of a certain amount occurs, or if your account drops below a certain level, etc.
Other banks just have alerts for when specific checks you know about have cleared, but don’t alert you about the ones you don’t know about.
It’s a far cry from the proactive work banks should be doing when they fail to hold on to the money you’ve trusted them with, but still, it’s really useful when time is not on your side.
(disclaimer: I’m not a Citibank customer; I just know these things)