Feel like gas prices are making a
dent in your budget? Imagine how Ray Crockett felt when he received a
bill for nearly $85,000 after filling his gas tank.
Nashville's News Channel 5
reports that Crockett charged about $30 in gas from a local station to
his Citibank debit card last week during a seemingly routine fill-up.
"I stopped here because they had the cheapest gas at the time," Crockett told the station. But that's not what his bank statement showed. "$84,522.54 to be exact," Crockett said.
Crockett says he made the
discovery when he attempted to use the card to buy lunch, and the card
was denied. When he checked his balance, his statement claimed he was
more than $84,000 overdrawn.
"That can't be right," Crockett said of his initial reaction. "It is crazy."
Regular unleaded fuel at the
Mapco station runs $3.05 per gallon. That means Crockett would have had
to purchase about 27,712 gallons of gas to justify the outstanding
charge.
Even crazier is that Crockett was
caught between a rock and a hard place when the bank claimed it had
made a payment to the gas station for the full amount. But the gas
station says it never received a payment from Citibank.
And it appears that Crockett may
not be alone. Nikki Johnson, another customer at the same gas station,
put $22.47 on her credit card for coffee and gas. Simple enough, right?
Johnson checked her bank statement to find she had been charged $58,278.35 for the transaction.
Crockett was left out of
financial resources, except for a $100 gift card that the Mapco gas
station gave him to help him get by until the issue was resolved.
When News Channel 5 asked
Citibank why it had locked Crockett out of his account and refused to
cancel the purchase, an employee simply told Channel 5, "Because this is
his account."
Crockett wasn't even able to access his weekly paycheck, which was directly deposited into the $84,000-overdrawn account.
However, the story has finally taken a turn in Crockett's favor. After the station's investigation, Citibank has reportedly unlocked Crockett's checking account and issued the following statement:
"Due to a[n] input error at the
merchant, a charge was erroneously billed to [the customer's] account,"
the statement reads. "Citi has credited [the customer's] account and his
card is available for use. We apologize for any inconvenience this
caused and are putting processes in place to ensure that this does not
happen in the future."
Duh. They should have done that the first day. Anyone with any common sense would have known the problem was not Crockett's. And the merchant also should have been on both inaccurate charges. Oy. Poor people.
ReplyDeleteThe people at Citi Bank are nit wits
ReplyDelete