Cancelling Citi Credit Protector
After a profitable run with Citibank’s Credit Protector program, including duplicate sets of retention rebates, I called the other day to cancel our coverage. I’ve been doing this with a ‘dormant’ Citi AT&T Universal Card whose rewards we had already maxed out for the year — since Credit Protector charges based on your closing balance, no balance = no fees. Well, the end of the year is now here, and I wanted to ditch Credit Protector such that we could start using the card to earn rewards again.
So I gave Credit Protector a call at their toll free number (1-888-253-3663) and waited patiently while the customer service representative pulled up our account. And that’s when it started all over again…
Him: “You’re currently on our $0.49/$100 program, which is the lowest price that we offer. But it really is great coverage, blah, blah, blah…”
Me: “Thanks, but I’m still not interested.”
Him: “Well, I do see that your account is eligible for $50 worth of mail-in rebates if you don’t cancel. You don’t even have to use the covered card to make the purchases. Just send us your receipts and we’ll send you your rebates.”
Me: “Hmm… I really do just want to cancel our account.”
And then I thought about it. We actually have two reward cards rolling over right now — the AT&T Universal Card and our Citi Dividend Platinum card. Both of these currently offer the same sorts of rewards (5% on gas, drugstore and grocery purchases, 1% on all else), and it takes awhile to max out the rewards (they’re capped at $300/year) [Note: The rewards on these cards have since been reduced form 5%/1% to 3%/1%]. So why not just use the Dividend Platinum card while we cash in on another set of retention rebates? These rebates typically come as a set of five $10 coupons, and you can only cash in one per month. But fifty bucks is fifty bucks, and it only takes about 10 minutes (total) to mail in the coupons. To make a long story short, I relented and the new set of rebate coupons should be here in a few days.
Published on December 27th, 2005 - 28 Comments
Filed under: Credit Cards
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I am not quite sure why, but I found this really humorous this morning. Thanks for a good laugh.
Comment by Blaine Moore — Dec 27th 2005 @ 7:53 amThought for you: you should calculate how much you “earn” in extra incentives, offers, etc. throughout 2006. It seems like you get a lot of stuff for little effort, and it would be fun (at least for me) to see how much it all adds up to.
Comment by FMF — Dec 27th 2005 @ 8:39 amI’d read the post. Of course, I read most of the posts so I suppose that isn’t saying much…
Comment by Blaine Moore — Dec 28th 2005 @ 9:36 amGreat idea FMF. MyMoneyBlog recently posted about this and I was impressed that he received about $1400 in bonuses.
Comment by Jeremy — Dec 28th 2005 @ 10:14 amWait until the IRS comes calling wanting you to pay taxes and bring a printout from your blog.
Comment by jim — Dec 28th 2005 @ 12:33 pmJim — Ha!
Jeremy — Do you know where that post from MMB is?
Comment by FMF — Dec 28th 2005 @ 1:35 pmI would not put it past them…
Comment by Blaine Moore — Dec 28th 2005 @ 2:26 pmMy mom does auditing and you should hear the stories of things people try to get away with. She had someone claim something like hail damage but they lived in texas.
Comment by jim — Dec 28th 2005 @ 5:19 pmOk, at the risk of sounding stupid, doesn’t it hail in Texas?
Comment by FMF — Dec 29th 2005 @ 7:01 amYeah, I was wondering about that myself.
Texas can get hail…pretty bad at times, too.
Comment by Blaine Moore — Dec 29th 2005 @ 8:03 amI thought so. Tornadoes too.
Comment by FMF — Dec 29th 2005 @ 1:29 pmI’m just starting on this myself–could you give a few tips? When you send in for the rebate, does the purchase have to be on the credit card the Credit Protector is on? Do you need to buy an item costing $10, or does the total on the receipt your sending just have to total $10 or more? Does it matter whether you bought something in a store, online, a service vs. products? Plain old grocery receipt ok? Thanks in advance.
Comment by EC — Dec 31st 2005 @ 8:07 amEC: You can send in *any* receipt as long as the total is $10 or more. Cash, credit (whatever card you want), check. If you find a receipt in a parking lot, you can use it. I’ve never used an online receipt, but I’m sure it would work. The only catch is that you have to use the receipts between the specified dates (one per month).
FMF (post 6). The My Money Blog post is here.
Comment by Jeremy — Jan 1st 2006 @ 4:47 amJeremy — thanks!
Comment by FMF — Jan 3rd 2006 @ 8:18 amI work for citi and credit protector sucks. The customer service reps are actually sales associates and use deceptive ploys to get yo to enroll. Please beware.
Comment by Lou — Mar 1st 2006 @ 4:33 amSeriously, ya’ll need to get to work and make money instead of stealing it.
Comment by John Jacob — Mar 31st 2006 @ 10:31 amI work for citi as one of the customer service reps, and for most people credit protector is worthless, but when you see the person that is at the 31% interest rate unable to make payments because they lost their job, its not a bad deal, or the wife put on as the primary card holder originally to alleviate the husband of responsibility of paying the bill if there’s ever a divorce and they die and stick their unemployed mother of 3 widow with the 8000 dollars in debt that they can’t pay, again, not a bad deal, they get up to 10000 credited, so don’t be so sure that its all about deceptive sales tactics and worthless programs unless you walk in the shoes of some of the people that can actually benefit from programs that are “worthless.” We don’t only sell products that you pay for, we sell plenty of stuff that any of you could benefit from. Change your crappy card into the dividend card, we get a commision off of that if its available, you don’t pay anything and just benefit with the cash back. Opening separate accounts, you can get another rewards program with a seperate annual cap, 0% on transfers, sometimes on purchases, no bad stuff there, no extra fees attached. And on the Diamond Preffered Rewards Card and the Premiere Pass Card you get 10000 thank you pts = to a 100 gift card just for making a purchase on the thing in the first 3 months, so you want more ways to make money for doing nothing there ya go. Bonus miles on the AAdvantage cards, extra cash back on the Dividend Platinum. All have no annual fee. But most of you people take john jacobs approach of “you’re trying to sell me something worthless and steal my money” that you don’t even listen and thats fine. And for those who actually have problems with too much credit card debt at high variable interest rates, we have the fixed interest rate consolidation loans to save money on the interest and have 1 monthly payment, you don’t even have to cash the check if you get approved if you find something better. And all of these cost no money to get started. Sure citibank gets money from it. Changing the card into another card like the Dividend entises the cardmember to spend more on the card to make money for the company… MAKE MONEY not STEAL. Having the second account, a lot of people having all different company rewards cards and as soon as one cap is met they go onto the next card, the company gives you another with a separate cap and then you use that one instead of a different company. MAKING MONEY not STEALING. The loan product, Competing for business with other creditors, along with freeing up the citi card for a fresh start with the card. Someone having trouble making payments on all their cards is going to have one payment making citibank money with less people going into collections and having to write accounts off. Merely simplifying their life, saving them money, and helping them get out of credit card debt. So there you go, not everything we sell is in an effort to steal your money. Thank you for posting, and we appreciate your business, have a great day. Deceptive One
Comment by Deceptive One — Apr 1st 2006 @ 1:46 amDO NOT get credit protector!!! Its a waste of money. I paid for all these months a fee for the Credit Protector… and for WHAT??? I recently had to move ALLLL the way across the country at the VERY last minute (packed up and drove across the country all in one weekend), due to my husband being deployed to IRAQ… so obviously I was unemployed! But they didnt even BOTHER to mention to me the Credit Protector that I had been paying my money for all of these months! Instead, they closed my account (which puts it in BAD standing) and only offered to LOWER my payments!! Now I have NEVER EVER been late on payments (during the ENTIRE time I have ever had credit), on ANY of my accounts… My credit should have been GREAT… But now my credit is between “Fair” and “Poor”!!! All because of this… something that was out of my control! And something that SHOULD HAVE been taken care of with Credit Protector!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Comment by Lisa — May 12th 2006 @ 12:07 pmIf you whine enough they’ll refund your current months paid fee on credit protector if you are worried about cancelling too late. Just say that the rep that sold it to you said that they would. And they won’t even investigate
Comment by T — Jun 13th 2006 @ 8:24 pmI am a customer service representative for CITI CARDS & AT&T UNIVERSAL CARDS. Why do people feel that whenever they are going to call the customer service they will start of with the sales. As we are talking about credit protector which you might feel useless paying today, might prove out to be the only way out for your problems tomorrow. It is something which is optional and is only put on an account with the proper consent of the card holder. I have received calls where in people are calling to get this coverage on the account but at that point in time they are not eligible for this programme. You might not feel worth paying few cents per $100 but think wherein you are relocating (which has got nothing to do with the credit card issuer) your two minimum monthly payments are getting credited to your card account permanently by this optinal service giving you complete peace of mind to use that money for that life event or if you are facing short-term disability or a job loss, you need not worry about your account for up to 24 months without actually accuring the finance charges, late fees or your account going in to the default rates. At the end i would like to conclude that do not restrict yourself for the few cents, think of the possible situation which can turn your life upside down where in you might land up with screwing your credit history or life events which you would like to celebrate the best way you can with a little contribution from this optional service which we have in place for you.
Comment by Jack — May 22nd 2007 @ 3:02 amWe are for you!
We are of you!!
We are by you!!!
We are CITI.
I just got off the phone in an attempt to cancel Credit Protector. The rep did her best to keep me on, and almost relented until she realized I had moved recently. She mentioned that was a “life event” and I could receive two minimum payments on my bill (for me, approx. $140) and no credit protector fee for those two months. Sounded like free money, but I feel a little apprehensive. Now I need to make sure I cancel in two months or I’m back where I started.
But if it’s genuine, it was a good deal for me.
Comment by Eric — May 8th 2008 @ 3:32 pmCitibank Credit Protector sounds great. Sign up for it. pay a fee every months maybe for years. Then you suddenly lose your job. TRAGIC!! You remember you have Credit Protector. Great!!! Then they do not honor it and not only you have given them your money, but you you feel even more miserable from believing in fairy tales! I warned you.
Comment by Emilio — Aug 20th 2008 @ 2:48 amYears ago I worked in the ‘retention center’ for Citibank Credit Protector. Miserable. It was my job to persuade people not to cancel; difficult as most people who called were furious and felt they’d been ’slammed’ into getting it in the first place. Anyway, we in the retention center were definitely all sales people - there were no trained CS reps there - and we were specifically coached in how to talk people out of canceling. We weren’t employed by Citi; it was a shady third party contractor in Coralville, Iowa. I didn’t like it much.
Comment by Jim — Dec 8th 2008 @ 6:39 amas someone who worked in retention the easiest way to cancel the worthless thing is to say u are disabled
Comment by anon — Feb 3rd 2009 @ 10:58 pmI just got off the phone with the Nth (yes, I dunno how many times I’ve been transferred to other agents, given phone numbers that don’t get me anywhere, etc..) Citibank Cred Prot. representative and I still haven’t gotten a single answer to my very simple one-sentence question: What is going on with my prepaid MasterCard cards?
Here’s my story: I called a last December to cancel Credit Protector - y’know, just to save up on all the extra fees that I incur each month with my remaining balance. So the rep offered me $50 in prepaid card certificates that are broken up in 5 increments of $10 which are only redeemable each month for five months - as long as you stay enrolled in the program. I’ve mailed out the first 3 (Jan-March) and I still haven’t gotten anything back from the first 2 months.
So far, no customer service rep has answered my question nor transferred or given me the right phone number for the right department (Marketing?).
There is no phone number on the back of the certificates - the redemption centers of which are in Farmington, MO. The signatory on the letter is a Mr. Ken Stork supposedly the president/CEO of Citibank (South Dakota).
This wasn’t the first time I called to inquire and been given the run around. I should probably just cancel this add-on service because I could just imagine how it would be like to actually try to get a claim with these guys.
Comment by AO — Mar 5th 2009 @ 5:54 pmI just had an experience with Citibank and Credit Protector. Basically I was persuaded it was a good idea to sign up last year, free month subscription all that jazz. We had some vacation travel a couple of months later when unexplicably the credit card was canceled, due to some fraudulent activity. We found that the Credit Protector was doing weird deductions from our account then repaying them as they obviously didn’t understand the account number was different. I even received a letter from some unknown place saying the account for Credit Protector was canceled. But the fight continued when we queried all this strange activity and tried to ensure it was indeed canceled. We were assured it was all going to be reimbursed, but was never followed through. Usual story! Finally after a ream of paper chasing letters, copies of letters and arguments we tried to call their bluff. They insisted that the account was approved over the phone so we asked to hear the tape. They called us to play it, I heard my voice and agreed that it was originally a conversation I had had with them. But we still argued that it had been canceled months previously. Finally I realised that the taped conversation mentioned that the account would not be considered valid until we received the information packet in the mail and were able to read and understand the terms and conditions. Bingo! The magic words were “We never received any such information packet in the mail” As soon as I said that the polite young representative that had argued for the last 20minutes said we could have a full refund back to the original conversation date. Yippee! We won!! So my advice is to never take it out in the first place of course as so many others have said, it is a complete waste of time and your valuable hard earned cash. But if you can tell them you never received the packet they have to refund everything back.
Good luck fighting them off!
Comment by Jackie — May 28th 2009 @ 11:07 am