Citibank AT&T Universal Card Citibank US Dangerous, potentially fraudulent customer service activity New York New York

We received our credit card bill (Citibank AT&T Universal Card) and noticed a fraudulent charge. We called the CS number on the back ot the card, navigated the menu-bot to the fraud department, yet were dumped into a generic, overseas call center. As we have been cardholders for decades, we knew that was highly unsual, something we'd never encountered before.

The CS rep, who had very little command of the English language, said she would flag the charge, but categorically refused to issue new card numbers. As I mentioned, this ain't our first rodeo, we've been through this before, so we knew, once again, that refusing to issue new numbers was very, very unusual. Well, lo and behold, a week later, we see hundreds of dollars charged to our card by the exact same fraudulent party.

The rep never flagged the charge, and allowed more fraudulent charges to go through. We called back, same rigamarole, dumped into the same generic call center staffed by barely-literate, untrained, unaware of legalities involved low-level reps. It took us over fifteen minutes of demanding our cards be reissued to get them to say they would do it -- in spite of the repeated number of high-dollar fraudulent charges on the card (one actually happened the very day we called the second time, I mean, come on!).

So over two weeks later (yep, not normal procedure compared to nearly 40 years of past experience), we receive the cards. We call the activation number, and that's when things got seriously creepy and scary. The 800 number (not the same as any of their other CS numbers) was answered by an elderly, very confused, utterly non-English speaking woman, who had clearly been woken up from her own bed by the call. We hung up, called again, assuming we had misdialed (nope, we hadn't). This time, an equally confused, flustered, slight-English speaking younger woman answered. She had no idea what to do regarding activation, not sure she knew what I was talking about.

We hung up again, accessed a US customer service number for actual banking, hoping we could at least get a rep based in the USA to direct us to the proper department. Nope. Got dumped YET AGAIN into overseas illiterate, untrained, not-secure call center hell. This time, the rep spoke English slightly better than Girl #2 (but not much!). She demanded the checking account number for the bank account from which we normally paid our credit card bill. Now THAT is beyond bizarre, has NEVER happened (I've never even had to speak to a person to activate reissued cards previously), and cannot possibly be legal. 

So now I'm moving my account to a safer bank, I've alerted our credit union that someone was trying to get the account number and requested authentication for all transactions going forward. 

Citibank is openly encouraging and enabling fraud perpetrated by its own overseas CS reps. This is dangerous, flouts every security regulation in place, and cannot possibly be legal -- just can't be legal at all. 

Do NOT bank with Citibank, or open credit cards with them going forward, and it's probably best to take advantage of a nice balance transfer if you already have any kind of Citibank credit card.