Citibank continues to train its customers to use terrible security processes.

This morning I got a call from a robot that claimed to be from Citibank. When I refused to type in my zip code, and then waited for two minutes of repeated requests to do so, it transferred me to a human who wanted me to give him my name, undoubtedly to be followed by a request for my password. Thus does Citibank train its users to divulge personal information to anyone with an automated phone dialer.

This is the same outfit that no longer offers to put a thumbnail photo of you on your credit card, which is a pretty good way to foil card-grabbing bastards. It also used to embed an image of your signature on the front of the card. Again, a cheap and effective prophylactic measure that it no longer offers.

This is also the same outfit that is very happy to sell us monthly services — $10/month last time I looked — that inform us when Citibank has failed to protect us from identity theft.

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I’ll skip explaining exactly why Citibank is impossible to deal with and how they are screwing up my credit by having created a fictitious account for me [see second comment for an update] and then sending it to a collection agency without ever having sent me a bill, and how multiple calls and escalations have not fixed this because Citibank’s various parts don’t communicate with one another, so getting it resolved with, say, the Customer Service folks remains invisible to the Personal Credit Destruction people.

So, last night, I spent another 20 minutes with Citi on the phone, talking with people who simply could not help me. They are fine folks doing their job as best they can, but they can’t see the computer files they need, and they can’t change the ones they can see. Citibank is broken.

Today I got a robocall from Citi asking me to complete a telephonic survey about my satisfaction. Hahahaha. But, in typical fashion, the questions pertain to the customer support person. How satisfied am I with her? Fine. She did what she could. But she couldn’t do anything because Citibank as a system sucks so bad. I’m not going to trash her because Citibank makes it structurally impossible for her to do her job.

If Citibank asked the right questions, it might find out just how broken it is.

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