Citibank’s Data Mess

I’ve been a Citibank customer since I was 13. And despite the fact that I should have switched from the bank long, long ago (the service is terrible), I’m one of those customers who is dictated by inertia. I can never justify the effort of switching, because the other banking options here in New York City appear to be not much better than Citi.

Be that as it may, at the least I would expect that being a Citibank customer for 27 years would afford me certain benefits, such as, oh, maybe that the bank knows who I am. So much for such wishful thinking.

The other day I got locked out of Citi’s online banking system. No, it wasn’t because I forgot my password and then pinged the database three or four times. It just denied me access. Why that was the case I have no idea — and while I have my theories, the reason is beyond the subject of this blog. Citi requires that you call to reopen access. It’s a huge pain in the you-know-where, but I understand why the call is required.

I happened to be at work when I called, and all my account documentation was home. The bank required my bankcard number, the card’s PIN and my bank account number to reopen the account. That was in addition to my mother’s maiden name, my Social Security number and my birth date. That’s a lot of verification. I didn’t have my bank account with me, so they shuttled me to yet another customer service agent who was going to throw a LexisNexis Banko quiz at me. I go through the quiz and they were obviously asking me to verify my address. Turns out my address in the Banko database is wrong (it has me living on 85th Street and not 86th Street). And here’s where the data shortcomings show themselves.

“Check where you send me my statements,” I tell the Citi rep. “You send them to 86th Street, not 85th Street.”

“I am sorry,” he tells me. “You have failed the test.”

“But why don’t you just check your records?”

“I can’t. I can only give you this test and you failed, so I can’t give you your account number over the phone.”

The rep gave me a number to call to change the information.

(A side story: “What’s the name of the information company you use for the data and the test?” I asked.

“I can’t tell you.”

“You can’t tell me?”

“I can only give you a number to call to have them fix your information: 888-497-0011.”

Google the number. It’s LexisNexis — but Citibank won’t tell you that. I listened to Citi give me the telephone number and not the name and my prevailing thought was: Citibank is run by a bunch of idiots. But I digress.)

The whole experience, as you can imagine, was upsetting to me. Citi’s inability to find a verification method that worked. Citi’s inability to cross reference data to reveal that LexisNexis’s data is incorrect. (Why LexisNexis’s data is wrong I have no idea. That’s today’s project.) But more profoundly, Citibank’s inability to know someone who has been its customer for 27 years — that is just pathetic.

And if Citibank can screw up a simple interplay with a random customer who happens to not have his account number handy, what else is Citibank screwing up on a more massive scale? I would think a lot. Which is why that cost-benefit of switching from Citi to another bank has just swung in the direction of switching. 27 years is long enough.