Citi’s “Secure Message Center” Run By Idiot Robots Who Don’t Care They Sent E-Mail To Wrong Person

Read the messages from bottom to top. First, Citi sends Zach a message intended for a completely unrelated customer named Geoffrey. Then Zach replies that he is not Geoffrey and that this is cause for concern. Citi’s response is to tell him how to add another person to his account.

If you’re a customer of any of the big banks, you’ve likely gotten a few messages in an online inbox that is only available via the bank’s website. You probably ignore most of these because they’re either about site downtime or upsells for add-on products you’ll never buy, but you probably assume that — unlike your gmail, yahoo, hotmail, or AOL account — this inbox doesn’t include messages that are intended for someone else. Wrong.

At least that was the case for Consumerist reader Zach, who noticed something odd about a message he’d received via the Citi Secure Message Center.

First, it was for someone with a completely different name. Last time we checked Zach is not an accepted nickname or truncation for Geoffrey. And the other person’s last name in no way resembled Zach’s; nor did the last four digits of Geoffrey’s card, which Citi helpfully included in its message in the Secure Message Center.

Since he is not Geoffrey Whatshisname and doesn’t have a card ending in the same four digits as Geoffrey’s, Zach replied to Citi, pointing out how the mere fact that he received a message intended for someone else is troublesome.

“On this very page it says that using the Secure Message Center is the safest way to communicate with Citi,” wrote not-Geoffrey in his reply to Citi. “How can it be safe if you don’t even know who I am?”

At this point, the Secure Message Center reveals itself to be run by idiot robots, who don’t respond to Zach’s question or apologize for the obvious error, but who decide this is the perfect time to give him information on how to add someone else to your account.

The moronic bot does apologize for the difficulty that might have been caused by the lack of Geoffreys on Zach’s account, so that counts for something, right?

Of course, Citi has a history of not actually giving a tiny turd about customers’ privacy. Case in point — that time in 2010 when it sent out 600,000 letters with customers’ Social Security numbers printed on the outside of the envelope.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist