Some relief for botched Citi Strata Elite application snafu

Citi has dealt with some more public embarrassment this week that stretched beyond coverage from miles and points blogs to the Wall Street Journal over the fiasco surrounding early applicants for the Citi Strata Elite having their accounts locked and being required to provide Citi access to tax transcripts. As Doctor of Credit has reported, some cardholders are now reporting having received an email confirming that their accounts have been unlocked — and Citi is now also offering to take things a couple steps further toward making it right by cardholders.

Citi sends email apologizing, taking strides to make things right

Doctor of Credit has reported on an email (see that post for a screenshot) being sent to at least some affected cardholders letting them know that their accounts have been verified. Furthermore, Citi is offering at least some of those affected the following olive branch offers:

• A statement credit in the amount of $595 (effectively refunding the annual fee) and $75 if any authorized users were charged to the account prior to receiving the email about the account being unlocked
• Crediting the 100,000-point welcome offer without the need to meet the spending requirement.

Obviously, if you met the spending requirement before card access was shut off, the second part will not be pertinent for you. However, both steps were the right way to handle this situation.

Those affected by the Strata Elite lockout have been unable to use benefits that they expected to receive in 2025, and while accounts are being unlocked with time left to use those benefits yet this year, opportunity may not align for all cardholders. I thought it was crazy for Citi to lock up accounts due to no fault of the cardholder and still keep the nearly six hundred dollars that those cardholders had paid while not allowing them to use their new card as they had intended. Refunding that fee is both reasonable and reasonably generous since cardholders may still be able to use at least some of the calendar year benefits this year (and next year).

Furthermore, the bonus points were a concern for many whose 90-day spending window was severely hampered by the long delay in getting their account unlocked. Again, crediting the bonus points here was the right thing to do since the account freezes were not due to customer error but due to Citi’s error.

The shame here is that this action seems directly tied to the public embarrassment Citi faced this week when the Wall Street Journal published the report. Clearly, this was a widespread issue and Citi was not fleet on its feet in getting it fixed. I’m glad to see the resolution, but it’s a shame that it took mass media coverage for Citi to do the right thing.

Unfortunately, not all cardholders who submitted the requested tax documents have yet had their accounts unlocked, and some cardholders probably opted to let Citi close their accounts instead of providing that documentation. I expect that those whose accounts are unlocked over the coming weeks will likely get this same waived-fee and no-spending-requirement bonus offers honored (the email indicates that both will apply automatically within 5 business days of receipt of the email), those who already closed their accounts are likely out of luck. Those whose accounts were never locked / were not required to submit 4506-C forms shouldn’t expect the same terms to apply since they weren’t locked out by Citi’s error.

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