Boing Boing is running a customer service horror story about Citibank.
Citibank customer Jake Appelbaum tried to withdraw cash with his ATM card on Saturday night in Toronto. The ATM machine rejected the transaction and urged Applebaum to contact his financial institution. When he did, he discoverd his problems were part of a much larger fraud crisis at the bank.
The supervisor informed me that there had been no direct fraudulent transactions on my account. Rather, she informed me that the ATM networks of Canada, Russia and the United Kingdom have been compromised. I used the term class break as a question and she repeated that there has been a class break of the ATM networks in those countries. The ATM network in Canada has been compromised and as a result, using my ATM card over the Canadian network locked my account automatically. She informed me that this has been an ongoing issue for the last two weeks. When I asked why there was no media attention, she said she wasn’t sure. I said it was a pretty big deal and she agreed.
She informed me that I would have to return to the United States to change my pin number before my card would be valid and in a usable state again. When I informed her that I would be traveling outside of the United States for at least a few months, possibly up to six, she repeated that I would have to re-enter the United States to fix the problem.
Given that Boing Boing is the largest blog on the planet, one might think Citibank would jump on a fix for this problem TODAY.
