Dear Citicorp Credit Services Inc.:
Earlier this week I received a letter from you informing me that my credit line had been reduced by 88 percent. The new level is about the same as when I first signed up for a Citi MasterCard 14 years ago. At the time I barely exceeded the poverty level based on my fresh-from-college nonprofit salary.
You explained your decision this way: “Your credit report indicates a substantial number of debts owed to other creditors.”
This made me laugh. I always pay my balance in full. I also closed a credit card last month, which raised my credit score, and never requested, nor used, the huge line of credit you extended to me last fall while the financial system was crashing around the world.
Nothing else changed in my credit profile. I still have the same mortgage and car loan I’ve been regularly paying for three years.
So I am wondering, was it my debts, or yours that made you decide to shrink my credit line? I remember that you borrowed $45 billion from me and every other American last fall. How is paying that back coming along?
I searched for an answer in your press releases, but could not find any related to that question. I did find others celebrating your great customer service and achievements in recent months.
“They paid for their purchases with the Citibank Credit Card and won MINI Cooper cars.” “Another first for Citi Pakistan!” “Citibank launched gourmet club in Chennai.” And “Citi wins 36 awards, four ‘Top Ratings’ in Prime Brokerage Survey.” Congratulations!
My favorite was: “Getting financially fit tops 2009 priorities.” I wondered who you were talking about – you or me and your other customers?
Then I wondered if you reduced my credit to buffer the impact of credit card legislation before President Barack Obama today. As you probably know, it makes it more difficult for you to extend lines of credit to people who don’t make enough money to deserve it. Don’t get me wrong. I agree that many of the provisions in the bill will have unintended consequences.
As American Express Co. CEO Kenneth Chenault said about the legislation: “At the end of the day, to be perfectly honest, it’s more negative than positive. … My concern is from the standpoint of credit being available, to particularly consumers who need it.”
Fortunately, I am not one who needs your credit card. And I bet that the projected squeeze on your profits from the legislation forced you to cut my credit line along with many of your other regularly paying customers to shore up your finances. But that is not what you told me.
For this latest insult, I canceled the card. Your decision follows an array of threatening letters raising my interest rate to 19 percent from 13 percent for being a day late paying off another balance in full a couple of months ago. It also follows years of feeling like a victim every time I opened a statement to see (purposely?) incorrect interest charges and assorted other fees.
I complained occasionally. But most nights I was too tired to sit on hold waiting to speak with someone whose English I couldn’t understand, who seemed so earnest in representing your multinational conglomerate and who could never connect me with the people who cancel cards. Plus, after so many miles racked up on American Airlines through my card, I couldn’t leave.
I went to Hong Kong on miles, seated in the middle row of the last aisle of the plane on a 15-hour flight from Los Angeles. I couldn’t recline and shared small talk and recycled air with the other plebes in coach lined up to use the bathroom. Talk about the benefits of using my Citi MasterCard!
Since I mostly fly Southwest Airlines, the miles I earn with you don’t matter anymore.
But more importantly, I’m sick of being lied to by you. I had high hopes that this crisis would usher in a new era of responsibility. But all I see is you taking my money and twisting your bad behavior into my problem. Your delusional press releases don’t help either.
Maybe if you used all those highly paid public relations people you employ to tell the real story of your finances, you’d earn my empathy.
But since honesty never was your policy, CEO Vikram Pandit has a tough challenge ahead should he attempt to change your culture. I wish him well. But I’m glad your problems are no longer mine.
Sincerely,
Marta H. Mossburg
Former Citi Card member
Examiner columnist Marta H. Mossburg is a senior fellow at the Maryland Public Policy Institute.
