An amazing story that happened to Ueli Grüter, attorney-at-law, lecturer at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, that shows that when the digital systems, like apparently Citibank’s online banking or Fin Tech, are not particularly smart, you end up having to go back to the offline world … and to instruct lawyers to settle the matter!
In 2010, while studying in Boston (MA/USA), I opened a bank account with the US Citibank, one of the largest financial services providers in the world, including a debit card, which had an advantage at the time, especially in US online shops. I entered the address of our partner law firm in Boston as my domicile. Since I used the account and debit card exclusively digitally, as is common today, the physical address was irrelevant, except for the delivery of the new debit card, when this has expired. I had the latter sent to Switzerland in each case. In the meantime, however, the partner firm in Boston at the time has apparently dissolved, which I was not aware of, and I did not take into account that the debit card expired last year and I did not provide Citibank a new address for the delivery of the new debit card. When I wanted to access my Citibank account online in February this year, Citibank tightened the security for the login and now requires the number of the debit card too. However, as this has just expired, the system no longer accepted the card number and gave the feedback: Oops, something went wrong, try again later … Since I don’t really need the Citibank account any more, I want to close it. To do this, however, I would have to have access to the online banking, which I don’t have because my debit card has expired. The Citibank telephone hotline advised me to ask Citibank to close the account by post and to transfer the balance to a Swiss bank account in my favour. I did that more than a month ago, even by registered letter. The Swiss post office confirmed that the letter had was sent to the USA. However, the Citibank telephone hotline has just told me that this letter is not registered with Citibank. I could also close the account by phone. They would then send me the balance in my favour as a check (sic!) to my (no longer valid!) address in Boston. However, a change of the address is not possible by phone, especially because the telephone hotline cannot send me an SMS to Switzerland for further necessary identification. So this is the classic dilemma in the digital world! »Dispute Resolution and Law Enforcement in the Digital World» is a chapter in my textbook www.digilaw.ch. But the crazy thing is that when the digital systems, like apparently Citibank’s online banking, are not particularly smart, you end up having to go back to the offline world. I have now asked our partner law firm in New York (also Citibank’s headquarters) to take care of the matter for me offline …
By the way, Citibank also has a branch in Switzerland. However, it tells me that it has nothing to do with business in the USA …
To be continued …
Ueli Grüter, LL.M., attorney-at-law, university lecturer, www.hslu.ch, https://twitter.com/juristenfutter, https://www.linkedin.com/in/ueli-grueter, www.digilaw.ch, www.intla.ch
