The question is in the title.
If you A) have a Citibank credit card; and B) receive your bill in the mail, do they send a return envelope with your bill?
yes
Not since I started paying the bill online.
I was running late a couple of months ago, so I made a one-time payment online. I didn’t receive a bill the following month. Somehow, I got signed up for paperless. I was not pleased. So I told them I wanted a paper bill. They mailed me one – without a return envelope. Also, they said I was no longer paperless. I mailed my check in, and wrote ‘Be sure to send a return envelope!’ on the stub.
This month: I get an e-statement. No sign of a paper bill. I called them. They said I was signed up for paperless. Um… No, we went through this before. They said, again, that they changed me to a mailed bill and took me off of paperless status. I reminded them that I needed a return envelope. They said they don’t do that anymore.
I prefer paper bills too because I’m old, but it didn’t occur to me until just now that they don’t send a return envelope any more. I do pay online, but without a pile of paper in front of me I know I’d forget to pay.
PS, Johnny–if you sign up for the online access to your account (very useful I find), you can go in and manually change billing options, including opting out of paperless bills. Much faster than a phone call.
They don’t send me a return envelope, but I always pay it electronically so that could be why.
On the other hand, many of my other creditors, who I also pay electronically, keep sending the return envelopes.
PS - off topic rant. I did sign up for paperless billing long ago, but they don’t really send you a “paperless bill” in your email. They send you an email *reminding *you to pay your bill. You still have to log into their website to see how much you owe them. I hate that; it really slows down the whole bill-paying process. So I switched back to the paper bill.
Back when I had paper billing, they stopped sending the return envelope. I remember seeing a little paragraph (probably on one of the bills) acknowledging that because I paid my bill online, sending the return envelope would be wasteful.
Maybe that single payment was enough to trip something in their system? I am familiar with the tactic of all but forcing you to go paperless in order to make a payment online* (thanks, PSNC), so that bit doesn’t surprise me.
- In the end, this wasn’t a bad thing…the local post office is so unreliable that I ended up switching all of my bills and statements to paperless delivery.
Why not just read the balance and the minimum payment (and due date and available credit) from the email, and then click the Pay Your Bill button?
In my case, I don’t have a great deal of money, such that I can just put everything on autopay and enjoy a paperless lifestyle. I put my bills into my check book, arranged by due date, so that I can pay them when I have the money and be reminded that I still need to pay bills in the next pay period. That’s easy to do with paper bills; emails, not so much.
The issuing bank doesn’t always include the balance, minmum payment, etc. in the emails. Sometimes it just says something like “you have a new bill on the system, and it’s due soon. Log into our secure site for the details.” because they know that email is very insecure and they don’t want to be risking putting customer data out there.
Enjoy,
Steven
Does Citi not have an app for their cards? My CC is linked to a smartphone app. I get an email saying my bill is ready, then can go into the app and schedule a payment. All the info is right there, in fact it shows the full balance and has options to pay the minimum, full balance or other amount. I can set the payment to post up to a week out, IIRC. It’s a breeze.
I get reminders in addition to paperless bills (featuring the actual amount due and the due date) from Citi. I still have to login to see the actual itemized statement. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at Citi’s preferences; is it possible that payment reminders are selected, but actual bill delivery is not?
As it happens, I got the paper bill today… with a return envelope.
they are watching what you post
I do only paper bills with credit cards. They send me a paper bill, and an envelope to send the check. But it isn’t exactly a ‘return’ envelope; it’s just a blank window envelope – when you insert the return part of the bill, their address shows through the window. And you have to pay the postage yourself. (If you don’t get one, a standard window envelope will work.)
But if you do pay online, they will try very hard to trick you into signing up for automatic online payment every month. And they make it difficult to shut that off. Even if you get them to send you a paper bill the next month, they will skip sending the return envelope – if you call them about it, they will just push you to pay online.