Citimortgage refusing credit card payments

[LiberalEsto]

I was floored to discover today that my mortgage company, Citimortgage, is no longer accepting credit cards for payments. They only accept bank debit accounts.

This is crazy! Why suddenly is a credit card payment no longer good enough? It's not like Citibank doesn't issue its own credit cards. But even their own cards are no good, because they just plain no longer take credit cards, period. :mad:

Picture some frantic homeowner trying to avoid being late on a payment, desperately trying to buy a little time by putting the payment on the credit card. Surprise! The mortgage company no longer takes your card, even if your credit is fine. I wonder whether any other mortgage companies besides Citibank are doing this.

Initially I found that the Citimortgage website has no option to pay by anything other than debit card (with a $10 fee). Then I called "customer service", as they laughingly call it. Various people I spoke to assured me that I could make my credit card payment by contacting their collections department. After being transferred and repeating a number of menu options, I got through to collections, only to be told there was no way I could make this month's mortgage payment with my credit card. They only accepted debit cards (fee to pay over the phone $15).

When I asked when this policy had been changed, they said it happened about 2 months ago. Obviously many of their customer service people weren't aware of this change. I asked to speak to a manager, was put on hold, and listened to more than 10 minutes of a recorded voice yammering about how great Citimortgage is, before getting fed up and hanging up. Which I'm sure was exactly what they wanted me to do.

Next I called my congressman's office and told them about it. I pointed out that this Citimortgage policy has the potential to hurt many homeowners who are teetering on the brink of foreclosure. They're going to have a legislative aide call me back. I also emailed a business writer at the local paper about it.

Isn't this swell? How many billions have we taxpayers shelled out to bail out these big banks? And they in turn look for ways to shaft us at every turn -- raising interest rates, adding new fees, and so forth. I heard some radio discussion the other day about a new bank fee called a dormancy fee that gets taken out of your account if you don't put money in or take money out for a given period. Now apparently some bank has shortened this dormancy period in order to gouge account holders.

PS I know paying the mortgage via credit card is not generally a great idea. However my husband just changed jobs and won't get his paycheck until the end of the month, so I was trying to avoid hurting our credit rating by trying to get the mortgage paid before the 15th of the month.

[MadHound]

1. Suggestion, interest rates are fairly low,

Refi and tell Citibank to go shove it. Go with a local/regional bank that is willing to work with you and actually appreciates your business

Oh, and pay off your credit cards, go to a cash/check/debit basis. Your life will be much better because of it.

[LiberalEsto]

8. Good advice

Thank you.
We have a low interest rate on the mortgage and I don't think we can afford the costs of a refi. And we were going to pay back the credit card at the end of this month with a bonus that's coming in.

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. DO NOT RE-FI. !!!!!

Re-fis are recourse mortgages and if you can't pay the mortgage you can lose more than the house..they can come after everything you have, your bank account, your car, etc.
Definition of a recourse mortgage:

"the borrower is personally liable for all debts, whether secured or non-secured. Therefore, if a borrower gets into difficulty and their home is repossessed and then sold, if the sale of the property yields less than the loan, the borrower is still liable for the difference, and the courts can attach their future earnings."

I had no idea of the difference myself, until I stumbled upon it online.

[Warpy]

9. Good idea, but Shitibank is also doing people a favor

because putting that mortgage payment on a card is simply converting a low interest debt to a high interest debt. It's financial suicide. It's better to be late on a payment, really, or to send in a partial payment and catch up ASAP. If catching up is not in the cards, it's best to read the writing on the wall and plan accordingly.

Trying to stall the inevitable by upping your interest rate on your debt load is stupid.

[LiberalEsto]

13. I agree to a point

It's a very bad idea to convert low-interest debit to high interest debt.

But if you know that you're expecting a certain amount of money, but not until after the mortgage is due, I don't think it's necessarily bad to pay the mortgage by credit and pay the credit card off entirely by the end of the month. That's our situation.

[Warpy]

14. A better idea would be to negotiate a new due date on the loan

if the money comes in at a regular time each month. You could then make the partial payment to cover the gap and then start paying when the money comes in, on time for the loan.

The worst thing to do is to get too comfy putting the puppy on a credit card, no matter how pure your intentions are.

[ejpoeta]

2. that's like when i worked at a store that wouldn't cash their own checks for the employees.

made me wonder about how good those checks must be if they wouldn't even cash them. LOL! it is kind of funny that a company that issues credit won't accept credit cards for payments.

[nc4bo]

3. Very interesting...

Are you sure you didn't overlook a notice in your statement?

I wonder if other mortgage companies are or will be doing the same thing?

Protectionism? Economic environment getting bad out there with more and more people unable to pay even the minimum on their credit card accounts. Jobs scarce and hard to find, good paying ones even harder. Of course some banks are rushing to raise fees, raise minimum payments and raising interest rates on the credit card accounts making it even harder for people to pay it off.

Too bad you couldn't get a straight answer.

Anyway, I'm truly sorry you guys are going through this.

[Skink]

4. They get kickbacks on the cash advances.

[havocmom]

6. We have our WINNUR! Yep; credit card companies make more on advances

bastards all.

[GodlessBiker]

5. They don't trust their own credit card customers to pay their bills.

[prostomulgus]

7. Every big TARP bank has been screwing citizens lately and

and Citi has been especially dispicable. They jacked up their credit card interest to 15 - 20+% even on their customers with good credit/payment history. They pay 0.05% to anyone stupid enough to keep money in their savings accounts. Their mortgage arm has become infamous for its abusive service this past year.

While all of that was going on, they were paying themselves fat bonuses and giving themselves big salary increases.

They should have been allowed to fail.

I no longer do any business with them and never again will deal with any subsidiary with the Citi logo.

[FarCenter]

10. It is pretty disfunctional that they won't take their own credit cards

But even if you pay your Citi mortgage with your Citi credit card, the mortgage line of business might have to "pay" the interchange and network fees to the credit card line of business....

Which hurts the profit and loss position of the mortgage executive.

[LiberalEsto]

12. Actually I was using a different card

The only credit card we use is issued by our credit union.

I was trying to make a point by saying Citimortgage won't accept any kind of credit card payment, which would include their own Citibank credit cards.