About 7-8 months ago, I had some HVAC work to be done. My contractor offered CifiFinancial Retail Services credit, and they were running a special deferred interest, so I applied. They quickly gave me a credit line, 10, 000.00 to be exact. I currently have under 1, 000 left, and I just found out my furnace is broken and needs replacing (it's currently off to avoid CO issues) as soon as possible.

I told the contractor to simply reuse the credit line they originally opened as there is open balance to cover the work. This was Friday 11/20/2009. When he left me a message on 11/22/2009 that the account was "locked"...

I called Citi and asked what was going on as of the last statement, everything was fine, I've never missed payments and this is important. The cust service rep went away for a few minutes, and returned to say the account was closed due to a fico review. When I questioned how that was possible and why I didn't get a letter confirming it, he responded with "You should get a letter shortly". I then asked when did this review happen?? He calmly indicated "yesterday", which was Sunday 11/22/2009.

Needless to say I lost my mind and temper. It's ridiculous to think that an account that has been in GOOD standing since it was opened would be closed the minute I actually need it. Had this happened weeks or months earlier, perhaps I'd have been upset, but certainly would not now be facing a winter without a furnace!

In my opinion, this is a HORRIBLE practice. For all those banks in bad financial straits, I wonder what their "FICO" scores were before they were given billions of dollars. I can only hope that Citi faces a similar fate as other bad lending institutions who are no longer with us. I would also hope that there are still banks out there that honor customers and not just their bottom lines and bonuses.

Needless to say, I will never ever do business with Citi in any shape or form...