Citibank has repeatedly been late in processing my Income-Based Repayment plan applications at no small cost to me. Against my will, Citibank placed me on forbearances that caused my decreased interest rate benefit to cease. Citibank later told me that they could not process my IBR reapplication while the forbearance that they originally advised me to go on was in place. Concurrently, Citibank reported me for delinquency on my loans, although I have made all payments for the life of all loans as later admitted and documented by Citibank. Citibank's errors have snowballed into issues with credit agencies, collection agencies, etc. I have spent countless hours on the phone with Citibank and these other various agencies attempting to clear my name and credit. Citibank has promised me countless of times that all issues were handled and squared away, though they were not.
I have seven student loans through Citibank that I have been paying off now for a number of years. Starting in 2009, I enrolled in the new Income Based Repayment (IBR) plan and I have had nothing but trouble since. This first year, it took Citibank over three months to process and approve my application even if their website states approval time of only 3-4 weeks. In the meantime, I was stuck paying the full thousand or so dollars each month that my loans require when out of deferment.
In July 2010, I began the process of reapplying for the IBR plan, hoping to avoid the issues of the previous year. Again, Citibank took multiple months to process and approve my application. The below dates detail events in the timeline of my issue: 9/7—I was told by Citibank that the application had been sent to and received by the IRS in order to request my tax transcript as is standard process. Citibank said it would take approximately 15 days for approval from that point. 9/27—Citibank said they still didn't hear back from the IRS and had re-sent my form to them.
10/14—Still no word. The expiration date (10/20) of the previous year's plan was imminent. I called again and was told that Citibank never heard back from the IRS; so, they had mailed me an "alternative documentation form" two days earlier. I was told that this form meant that I had to fill out my tax info myself using my previous year's tax return. They said my first statement going back into repayment would come on 10/26. Since the plan hadn't gone through yet, I would most likely have to pay the full amount on my loans. I said I could in no way afford to start doing this like last year. They said that I should not worry, Citibank would perform a retroactive forbearance after the application had been approved. This means that I wouldn't have to pay. I mentioned that I was currently enrolled in the EZ Pay auto-debit system for my monthly payments, which grants a half point interest rate reduction for being on it; so I couldn't simply choose to not pay the first statement amount. They said if I didn't want to have the payment automatically debited, then I should call back in a few days to see if the plan had been processed. If it still did not go through and my first auto-payment was imminent, then I could request that they cancel the EZ Pay enrollment.
10/20—I received and immediately mailed the alternative documentation form to Citibank. This was also the day my previous year's IBR plan finally expired. 11/2—I called Citibank and spoke to a manager. She said my reapplication had been approved and quoted me my new monthly payment amount of $203.31. She said I would not have to make my first payment until December as Citibank had previously put me on the forbearance so I wouldn't have to pay the full loan amount for that month when the IBR plan was still being processed.
11/29—When my statement for December came, I saw that I was again being charged the full amount ($1000 plus) and that I was not on the IBR plan as they said I would be. I called and spoke to another manager. She said she didn't know why my plan was not finalized. She said she would put the account into another administrative forbearance so I would not have to pay the December amount while Citibank sorted things out. She said she would put a rush on figuring out why my IBR plan was not put into place.
Mid-December—Around this time, I noticed in the online system that my loans were showing as being delinquent! It showed various days of being overdue (some 30, some 60, and some are 90 days overdue). It was really odd because my loans were showing as being in forbearance, but at the same time being delinquent. This should not be possible.
12/19—I received a call from a woman with a very thick accent. She said she was calling from a collection agency on behalf of Citibank. According to her, my loans were past due and she was asking me to pay. I said I didn't understand. I explained what had happened and said that my loans were supposed to have been in forbearance for the past two months. As soon as I said "forbearance," she latched onto that word and stopped listening to me. I had a hard time understanding her because of her accent. I repeated myself and said I was supposed to be on forbearance. She said okay and hung up.
12/20—I called Citibank again but was unable to speak to a manager. I was told I would receive a call back from one within a week. In the meantime, the regular customer service rep tried explaining that the administrative forbearance was covering me for payments up to one year behind the date I received it. She said it was covering me for payments due back in July. I said I was confused and told her that I didn't miss any payments in July—I was only supposed to have been on forbearance for my November and December payments while Citibank worked on my IBR reapplication. She said that she didn't understand either.
I felt that this girl didn't really know what she was talking about, so I called back to try somebody else. The second rep said that an Administrative Forbearance covers one month on the date it is applied as I originally thought. She said a verbal forbearance covers you for any missed payments in the past year. I said I was confused because I never requested a verbal forbearance. She said it must have been the woman who called me from collections. She must have heard me say "forbearance" and latched onto the word and placed a verbal forbearance on my account to cover these supposed odd missed payments in July, even though she had not explained this.
As of this date, the IBR plan was still not in place. It was approved as of mid-October, but not applied to the account and nobody could tell me why.
12/21—I noticed that the loans were no longer delinquent and no longer showed any amount being due on them. However, the IBR plan still didn't show. They were not in forbearance either. They were in repayment, although the amount owed was $0.00.
12/22—I called Citibank again and was able to get through to a manager named Lindsay. She said something odd again about how the forbearance is retroactive to cover any delinquency and bring my account up to speed. I said I still didn't understand because my account should not have been delinquent. Lindsay then said that the reason the IBR was not being put in place was because the account had forbearance on it. I asked why they would have put me in forbearance if it meant my IBR plan could not be processed. That was supposed to be the whole point of the forbearance—to give them more time to process the IBR plan. Lindsay said they would remove the current forbearance to get the IBR plan in place. She said my case would be escalated to upper management to be expedited and that it should be done by 12/27.
Later that day I got a call from a representative who worked for Lindsay asking about my case. She said she was trying to put the IBR plan into place, but couldn't because of the forbearance. She needed to know which she wanted me to have: the IBR or the forbearance. I reiterated my whole story and said that I want the IBR plan. She mentioned again about the verbal forbearance bringing my account out of delinquency. I stopped her and said, "Okay, people keep saying that and I am telling you here and now that my account was never delinquent! Where are you seeing that?" She said it showed my account as having not been paid for July, August, and September of 2010. I said that was impossible. I was on the EZ Pay system during those months and the amount was debited from my bank account each month as normal. I never missed those payments! She said that if you look individually at those payments, it does indeed show them as having been paid. So she didn't understand why the system was saying they were not paid. She said she and Lindsay would open an investigation into this matter and would try to get my IBR plan in place as soon as possible.
12/27—I received a voicemail from Lindsay confirming that my IBR plan was in place, that the overdue payments had been lifted, and that everything was now correct. I checked online and confirmed it was all correct looking.
December-February—Partway through December, I started receiving letters from Citibank and from the NY State Higher Education Service saying that my account was past due and that I needed to contact my lender immediately lest any negative action be taken. I thought the letters would stop once everything was straightened out on Citibank's end, but they kept coming. Eventually I received a letter from Citibank saying they had reported my delinquency to national credit bureaus and that they would possibly sell my loans off. Late February—I decided to check my credit score. When I received my credit reports from the three national credit bureaus, sure enough each one showed negative, damaging information having been reported by Citibank stating that I never made my payments for July, August, and September of 2010.
2/28—I called and spoke to another manager named Barbara. I explained the whole situation and she immediately started trying to tell me that I was on a forbearance to cover my past due accounts. I stopped her and said, "No, I was never past due—that is the big problem." I went on and said, "Your system keeps saying that I missed payments in July, August, and September, but I never did and it was supposed to have been taken care of, but I am still getting letters threatening action and saying I have been reported to credit bureaus." At this point, I told her that Citibank's errors had caused severe personal damage to me as my credit rating was now damaged. She said she would open a case to have Citibank correct their info with the credit bureaus and she would also send me a letter stating that I had never been overdue on my account.
I did get the letter about a week later. At the same time, I opened dispute cases with the credit bureaus, which were resolved in my favor. Theoretically, the bad info from Citibank has been cleared from my credit report.
Late March—I received another letter from the NY State Higher Education Service saying that my loans were still delinquent and that if I didn't pay my lender immediately, NYSHES would imminently collect my loans, place them in default, and impose harsh penalties.
3/28—I called and spoke to another manager named Amanda to discuss the above letter. She said she would have NYSHES contacted and let them know my loans were up to date. She said this should take no more than 2 business days to update. 5/2—I received another letter from NYSHES stating that I must take immediate action to resolve the delinquent status of my loans. I called NYSHES and explained my whole story. The representative said that as of that date Citibank was still noting to them that my account was delinquent, despite earlier claims that this would be corrected.
Citibank has not only cost me countless hours of time on the phone with them and other organizations affected by their errors, they have actually cost me money. Every Citibank rep was quick to ignore the fact that for those three months that they had me in forbearance, I lost my EZ Pay 0.5 percent interest rate reduction (you cannot get that while you are in forbearance). So, Citibank actually made extra money in the form of additional accruing interest while I was in multiple forbearances that they insisted I go on and, which I found out later, were in fact the very things preventing my IBR plan from being put in place.
Additionally, I have suffered terrible stress and anxiety from the constant notices of delinquency, which I never should have received in the first place. It is a crushing weight to have to constantly try to correct Citibank's errors that have so greatly affected my life. This has been going on since late summer/early fall of 2010 and I am still receiving notices, despite multiple claims on Citibank's part that everything is correct.
