Citibank. Why?

Quick background: Now that I am with job again, I intend to be as aggressive as possible (without being reckless) toward paying off my student loans. As such, I recently made (rather, attempted to make??) a large payment toward my highest interest rate loan. Makes sense, non? Anyway, as explained below, this requires one to mail in a payment (instead of paying online) and include specific instructions about how the payment should be allocated. Which I did (I even kept a copy for myself! Go me.). Alas, my good faith effort was foiled by some kind of super computer. I, Robot, anyone? I suppose that I am annoyed/frustrated for (at least) two reasons: (1) I followed the instructions on Citibank’s website exactly, only to find out about some mythical “Exception Payment” alternate address that I had no way of knowing existed, and (2) That was the biggest check I'd written EVER, so I was already very antsy about the whole affair, and now I’m just extremely anxious for Citibank to get the whole thing fixed.

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[Probably Fruitless] E-mail to Citibank:

This is a comment about an answer to one of the questions on the “Frequently Asked Questions – Making Payments” section of your website. The question is “Can I designate how to apply my online payment to my loans,” and the answer given is “No. Online payments are distributed across all loans listed on your statement. To pay a specific amount on a particular loan, you’ll need to mail us the payment. Please print your online statement, indicate your payment instructions and mail them to The Student Loan Corporation, P.O. Box 6615, The Lakes, Nevada, 88901-6615.”

Recently, I mailed a payment and included specific instructions that the full amount be applied to one loan only (instead of being applied to all loans on my statement). I followed the instructions in the FAQ Answer exactly, including mailing my payment to the address listed. However, when I checked my online account to confirm that the payment had been received and applied, I found out that (despite my instructions) the payment amount had been applied across all loans, NOT applied to the one loan as I requested. When I called Citibank to inquire about this problem, I was told that mail sent to the P.O. Box 6615 address is opened by some kind of computer system, meaning no real live person saw or read the instructions I included. I also learned about an “Exception Payment” address (8725 W. Sahara Avenue, Attn: Exception Payment, Mail Zone 1225, Las Vegas, NV 89117) and was told that “exception payments” (such as mine) should be mailed there, as a real live person opens mail sent to the address.

My comment/question is, if this is the case, why then does the FAQ Answer list the P.O. Box 6615 address, not the “Exception Payment” address? I find it very annoying (and inconvenient) that I followed the FAQ Answer instructions exactly, and yet my payment was misapplied. Moreover, I have been told that due to the “economy” (e.g., I was told that Citibank has been inundated with requests to have payments postponed, thus causing a backup with other pending requests), it will take up to two (2) weeks for my request to have my payment reapplied correctly taken care of, instead of the normal processing time of 2-3 days. While I have been assured by Citibank that everything will be corrected (and that I will not be penalized in any way – which I surely hope is the case, as I have done nothing wrong here), I am frustrated that all of this was even an issue/problem in the first place. Would it not make sense for Citibank to update its website/FAQ section to reflect the “Exception Payment” address? I cannot imagine that I am the ONLY Citibank customer to have encountered this issue. All I am trying to do is pay my Citibank student loans, and up until this point (this is the first time that I have mailed in a payment; before now, I always used the Pay Online feature), I have never had a problem doing so. In fact, in the years that I have been a Citibank student loan customer, I have never had any problems at all!

I expect that within the next two weeks, my online account will reflect the reallocation of my mailed in payment to the appropriate loan. Otherwise, I will definitely be following up with another phone call to Citibank.

Love, me.

Actually, I take back the love.

me.