At this point CITI bank has had two social security checks deposited there, but has frozen my accounts so I can not access my money. I have what they call Gold status resulting from having had $200,000 in deposits and investments. This gets an assigned representative, very polite, but with no power, who knows who I am and has met me, as had the women with the job when I opened the accounts (and a CITI executive who even the two of us two to lunch).
After I applied for a new Wealth Management Account, and gave an honest estimate of my wealth. They grilled me intensively on the sources of my money, and then declined to open a new account after perhaps a half hour grilling on where my money had come from, involving even looking up records. They then declined to open a new brokerage account.
Perhaps a month lady a woman with a Vice President title called land asked a series of financial question about how much my salary had been in my previous jobs, my investment strategies, how much I had inherited, and how my father had made his money (a middle management salary and frugal living, but he never shared details with me.) A good faith effort was made to answer these but after fifty years of investing and one natural disaster, detailed answers could not be provided.
While having had an account with CITIbank for well over a decade, this bank account was relatively new (opened 2016) after a personal visit to this branch, and lyet been established long enough to have had three different Gold representatives assigned to it. and had been used to have a social security direct deposit made, and then to pay a small number of bills to typically to US credit card companies.
In December 2018 I looked at my accounts and noticed the amount shown as on deposit was the social security direct deposit. My instructions to send most of it to Discover card, and $10 to American Express had not been carried out. After a confusing series of calls to their customer service people, I learned my account was frozen by the mysterious Know Your Customer Group. The assigned Gold representative (officially for client with over $200,000 on deposit in investments and deposits)) eventually confirmed the account was frozen, but after weeks could not solve the problem.
I did try the experiment of seeing if the funds on deposits could be used to make a $25 payment on a CITI credit card, but the system refused to process this transfer.
I have since learned that he cash in my CITI brokerage account is unavailable to me. Much time was spent trying to invest about $200 taking advantage of their offer of commission free purchases of exchange traded funds for Gold clients, but their system refused to do so. Even with perhaps an hour of even with the help of a representative on the phone.
There seems to be no dispute as to my ownership of the funds on deposit (myself), the source of them (Social Security), the legality of the use of the account (to pay CITIbank credit card balances, Discover Card, and American Express). While great damage could have been done to my credit rating (twenty years of all payments made on time) by CITIbank not using the money on deposit to pay Discover or American Express as directed, these bills were paid on time from other sources. This was fortunate, since CITI did not inform me that my account was frozen, or that they did not intended to honor my bill pay instructions.
While the source of the problem seems to be other parts of the CITIbank organization, it is clear that if CITIbank is trusted with funds there is no assurance of being able to regain the funds on demand even when the ownership of the deposits is not in dispute, or the identity of the depositor in dispute. CITIbank cannot be trusted to receive deposits and return the money upon request.
This branch lacks the power to resolve issues related to returning funds deposited in accounts opened here, even for their Gold clients. read more
