This story is about the Citibank Philippines Citicard Services Enhanced Cash Advance.
If you are a citibank card holder and an agent calls you and manipulates you to signup for the enhanced cash advance promo. Do not say the words YES, OO, OK and anything that will lead them to assume that you have agreed to the enhanced cash advance promo. This is what happened to me over 3 weeks ago.
It was one afternoon, I was busy with work and our receptionist informs me for a phone call. I accepted the call and found out that it was a citibank agent asking about my credit card if everything was ok. I said NO. the first mistake citibank did was sending me the wrong credit card. I specifically signed up for a Shell Citibank Card and what arrived was a Mercury Drug Citicard. I let that go because it was a waste of time to followup. Now going back to the agent on the other line… I asked her what is this about, she introduced a service called the Citibank Enahanced Cash Advance something… She asked If I was interested and I said NO, then she kept asking if I was interested and I kept saying No and i dont need the money (because I have lots of it lol). If I remember it correctly I told the agent not to send me anything and dropped the call.
After 2 days a cheque arrived for some good amount. I immediately checked my citibank online account and everything seems to be ok. another day passed I checked my citibank account again and what a surprise the same amount of money on the check was debited to my account. I immediately called citibank asking what the hell happened to my account. Citibank told me that I may have agreed to the citibank cash advance thing. Of course I told them that I did not in any circumstance agreed to anything, so I asked for a cancellation and that all charges be reimbursed. They told me it will take 7 business days and that I must not withdraw the check. Of course I wont (I dont need it. hehehe). 7 days have passed, Nothing has been returned to my account so I called Citibank Philippines again and they told me it was still under cancellation process… How come approving something that you did not asked for took them 2 days and when it comes to cancellation it will take them more than 5 business days to process. So i warned the agent that all my bills are coming (onebill payment), the agent told me that I should wait a few more days. Few more days have passed.. actually it was today because my meralco bill arrived yesterday, to check I called Citibank Philippines again to ask if they are done with the cancellation fof the Enhanced Cash Advance thing. What do you know… It is still on process how long should it take to cancel something that I did not asked for. So I asked the agent if my utility bills and others are already in. Well what do you know, 2 of them already got REJECTED because my card was already maxed out due to the cash advance thing. This is the time I really got angry, why? because now I have to go to Meralco, Globelines, Globe Innove to pay for my bills. We all know how inconvenient it is to go to Globe payment centers. So I asked the agent to fix it and they still have to pay all my bills for me because clearly its not my fault they got rejected. The agent told me that she will report this incident and should wait until wednesday and get back to them. Heres the kicker… by July 28 it will be my cut-off date for citibank, meaning my credit will be computed so they will know how much I owe them and how much I should pay them. With the used amount that I made it is going to be a pretty big payment for me. So I asked the agent what will happen if the credit they owe me is not yet returned by the 28th, Well she told me that due to that the cash advance amount, it will be part of the computation and I have to pay for it. This is where things get very interesting. Due to Citibanks mistake I now have to suffer and pay for the things that I did not asked for. I feel harassed and violated. This is going to be my first series post.
Watch out I’ll be updating this post. For now tell me know what do you think. If you are someone who experienced some kind of harassment from Citibank Philippines, Come out share your expreience.