Whoopsadaisy! Citigroup has accidentally been charging many customers more than what they owe for months, with some of them not even realizing it was going on until the bank sent out a notification. Cit’s bill-pay app for iPads was the culprit in many cases, charging customers twice what they owed for bills or mortgage payments.
The New York Times says the bug started in the iPad app around July but wasn’t detected until December, after consumers’ complaints about payments being off. Other mobile applications and the online bill payment system weren’t affected, says Citi.
However, some customers who never even used an iPad to pay bill said they’d also been hit by double charges, something that hasn’t been explained away yet. The bank is promising to reimburse customers and waive any fees incurred because of the extra charges, as well as give out a few points for its reward program.
“We take seriously the functionality of our products and services as well as the satisfaction of our clients,” spokesman Andrew Brent said in a statement.
Users of Citibank Bill-Pay App Charged Twice [New York Times]
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“Honey, is our mortgage payment usually $3,000?” “I dunno.” “Ok, I guess it is.”
They have to find those multi-million dollar executive bonuses somehow.
Fund the bonuses…not find them…UGH!
Find could be appropriate as well.
“We found all this money just lying around in our customer’s accounts! Let’s see if they notice if we take some…”
Must be nice not to notice your account getting double dipped when paying bills. I would be screwed!
I was thinking the same thing! Damn 1% fucks!
It would take me about 1 day to notice that with my online credit union account, not months. Geez.
Oh thank god you guise…. thy’re takin it srsly….
No “taking it seriously” tag?
I’m sure glad they are taking it seriously.
/douchenozzles
“We take seriously the functionality of our products and services as well as the satisfaction of our clients,”
So seriously it took 5 months of complaints for them to actually look into finding this bug? That’s pretty failtastic if you ask me.
> So seriously it took 5 months of complaints for them to actually look into finding this bug? That’s pretty failtastic if you ask me.
Well yeah… once you take their entire customer base, limit that to just the customers who use the iPad app to pay their bill, then limit that to just the customers who actually noticed something was amiss AND was motivated enough to report the problem… you could be looking such a small number of bug reports that the rep on the other end of the line at the 800 number would have chalked it up to user error.
That’s really how some bugs go unchecked for a long time – folks either don’t know or care that there’s a problem, and “fat fingering” becomes the presumed cause when you get one phone call a month about it.
I bet the development of this app was outsourced in India…
I used to work for Citi, I currently work for Apple – this is hilarious.
The best part is – if any of those payments come up returned, you’re fucked with online pay with Citi.
You cannot use any method of online pay for 6 months for each occurrence – not sure what happens with mortgages though.
Also… I use my cat like that.
He’s an awesome electronics stand.
I’m not usually a big “There otta be a Lawr” kinda guy, but it seems to me that something along the lines of “If you take more than you should have out of a customer’s account you owe them double that in return, AND refund of fees, AND any damages. ” would cut down on this nonsense enormously.
I’m not usually a big “There otta be a Lawr” kinda guy, but it seems to me that something along the lines of “If you take more than you should have out of a customer’s account you owe them double that in return, AND refund of fees, AND any damages. ” would cut down on this nonsense enormously.
Sorry about the duplicate. Not sure why.
Communism! Reds! Unamerican!
Yeah, as long as companies taking from you until you notice, oops, our mistake. But if you show up at their store and walk out with goods, you get immediately arrested, even if you say “oops, mine this time.”
The best justice system money can buy.
Well, it is, really. Because at least it recognises, in theory, that there are some things that don’t belong to the connected. But that hardly means that it can’t be improved.
Sounds like Citibank developed some software without testing it fully.
And this is why I don’t use bill payer services. I go to the website and set up one time payments there.
I couldn’t agree with you more. I feel much more in control when I go that route.
I usually refer to Citi with an “h” strategically added into their name anyway.
If you’re using an iPad, you’re probably too much of a hipster idiot to pay attention to your finances anyway.
“Citibank May Have Double-Charged Customers Using Its Bill-Pay App”
Well color me surprised!!!
I freakin knew there was something wrong with Citi bank’s bill pay (not the app). I encountered this BS twice last year. I would set up payment for my CC and the payment would disappear when you check future payments. Then I would set up another payment since I thought I forgot. Then on the due date, I get deducted 2 payments. Happened twice so I have been keeping snapshots off my payments ever since. They have no clue on what’s going on when they updated their website.