Easy fraud on my lost card, no security at all. If you loose it thats it, you are fraud for them and they will harass you for lifetime. Never ever take it. Hyderbad, andhra pradesh, india
I had a salary account with citibank opened in 2007. They offered me a visa credit card (indian oil). They closed my salary account in 2008 without informing me. I always used to access my account online on their website. When i tried to access my account in nov 2008, i wasn’t able to do it. My credit card account was also linked to my savings bank account. I was not able to access both the accounts and when i tried to inquire they said my account is closed. I thought that both my debit and credit card with citibank are dead cards and i don’t have to worry about them. I just forgot about the citibank credit card after that.
I lost my wallet on sept 8th 09 at 3 pm along with my citibank credit card and some hot cash etc. The person who got it made fraudulent charges on it amounting to inr 48, 850.00 at four different merchants mainly in old city. I received a statement on sept 29th 09 dated sept 21st 09 bearing four transactions. All these purchases were not made by me as my card was lost on 08-09-09.
Credit card was issued to me on the basis of salary account. When they closed my salary account why was the credit card account not closed. As soon as i received the statement showing these transactions, i have approached one of the merchant "shyams fashion fabrics" and i requested them to show me the transaction slip on which the purchaser signed which to my surprise was entirely different. There were just 2 lines in the place of signature.
I asked few questions to them for which they don’t have any answers.
- Why did the merchants not ask the purchaser to produce the identity card etc? When there’s a rbi rule for every merchant to verify the id of the card holder.
- Why can’t the merchant verify the signature on the back of the card and on the charge slip?
- Why didn’t the bank tally my signature on the receipt before transferring the funds to the merchant? When i asked these questions to their fraud officer who came to meet me he says, the merchants are illiterate and do not know how credit cards work, hence i take all the blame. I told him that it’s bank’s duty to educate the merchants. Will the merchant accept any fake currency notes? There is absolutely no security whatsoever for customers. No security pin, no signature verified and no id verification. Anything can happen with anyone’s credit card if this is how the bank works.
After this incident, i was seeking help from their customer care executive mr. Ram who was very disappointing, there was no care for customer. He was not at all listening to me. It takes ages to first get through to someone and then their representative raises hands saying we cannot do anything. When i am saying that these are not my purchases as a bank, they should at least believe me and try to help me in finding out how this happened. I was given the same answer again and again, “we cannot do anything”. They just don’t care for their customers.
Every other bank in this case would raise a dispute and do not put other charges on it unless the issue is resolved. But citibank is adding interest charges to it and started harassing me. I did go to police station who issued me a certificate and i requested them to investigate the said fraudulent transactions and bring the culprit to justice. But i cannot make the payment for the bank’s and merchants fault. Now, citibank is asking me to make the payment. I cannot make any payment towards these transactions and would like to close my credit card account. Therefore, i request someone from citibank’s top management to help me in this regard and close my account completely with zero balance.
Thanks,
Mohammed mazher khan