I know I don’t post often but I really need a place to rant.
My husband is in Korea teaching english, so I am in charge of paying his bills. He sends me money, I pay his credit card bill at Citicard. Unfortunately, we lost his credit card, so we neither know the account number nor the security code. This means I can not pay online, because in order to add a new payment option (my bank info), you must know the security code on the back of the credit card.
OK, so we report it lost and get a new one. But we moved, and in order to change the mailing address, we need to know the account number, which we don’t have. (Note we’ve already tried this once hoping it would forward, but we never received it.)
So I call, and for the last two months was able to (with difficulty and frustration) pay the bill online, but I had to give them his SS number and the answer to his secret question. Just to PAY!!! his credit card. Not to buy anything, not to change any information, just to PAY THE BILL!
So far this month, I’ve had someone tell me it will be $15 to pay but I need the account info, so sorry. And another pull up his account after I gave them his SS number, but say, sorry you can’t pay it unless you know the account number. YES I CAN PAY IT! I’ve done it TWICE now!
ARRRGH!!! Why is it so hard to pay a friggin credit card bill!?! I’m so frustrated right now!
This is why I have my account number memorized. It also comes in handy when I want to do some impulse Internet shopping and don’t feel like schlepping all the way over to the other side of the room to get my credit card.
I just wrote a check for this month’s Citicard bill this morning and saw that they now don’t even print the full card number on the bill, only the last four digits. That’s new.
If I were your husband, I’d find someone more responsible to take care of paying my bills. How can you not keep a copy of a financial account number somewhere?
The OP doesn’t know the account info, loses the card, moves without bothering to inform Citicard, manages to pay the bill twice but didn’t bother to collect any info about the account on these two occassions, and still doesn’t have a replacement card.
Yeah, I’m not feeling a lot sympathy for the OP, either. After the first time she had problems paying, you’d think she would have bothered to keep track of the information somewhere.
I was not the one who lost any of the information, I never had it. I didn’t lose the card, and any statements we get are, like said above, lacking the entire account number. I am frustrated because I have been able to do it this way before – call in, give them what account information I have, and pay it, but today every person who answered the phone said that was not possible. And I am not blaming anyone. I just don’t know why it has to be so difficult just to *pay *a bill.
I’m not sure if Citibank does this, but I pay my credit card bills directly to my creditor. It’s not automatic; I have to log in and authorize the payment. With my login to my credit card, as well as making a payment, I can change my address and phone, my email address and my payment method. And report lost cards and other problems.
I have never understood why people want to set up payment through their banks, when you can make a direct payment to your creditor using your bank account.
I have my card number, security code, and expiration date written on a 3 x 5 card which is in my desk drawer. However, the only other person who has access to this desk, as a general rule, is my husband. When we go on a trip and his brother takes care of the cats for us, I lock up that card, any other sensitive information, and my jewelry. Same goes for if we have to have any service people in.