Over the weekend I received a closure notice from Citibank. It seems that I did not use my Citi Flex Line of Credit account enough. As a result, the account is now closed. (Update (Sept. 10): on my credit report, it’s being reported as closed by grantor, rather than closed by the consumer. Would have been nice if Citi had noted that it was closed by me. Oh, well. Another interesting thing is that Citi reported the limit on the account as well. For the past year, it has never reported a limit.) And I’m not alone. Several members over at CreditBoards.com have reported closures as well. All of us were shut down for the same reason. The account was closed “due to the length of time that has passed since it was last used.” For me, it was never used. So, yeah, I guess it’s been some time since I last used it. Still, I’m not sure what Citi expected. A Line of credit isn’t, at least for me, something that gets used very often. It’s used when you need cash. When credit cards just won’t do, having a line of credit is a nice tool. Frankly, I don’t think Citi knew what it was doing when it rolled out this product last year. From the beginning, it’s been a subpar product. There was no online access, you had to request checks over the phone, and, I believe, the checks always had an expiration date on them. Worse, it often took weeks to receive new checks. It’s my understanding that Citibank has now stopped offering the Citi Flex product altogether. Existing Citi Flex accounts will continue to get serviced. This weekend’s round of closures, though, makes me think that Citi would rather this product go away completely. So, for those of you who have this account, I can only advise one thing. If you haven’t used the account — but want to keep it open — you might want to give it some usage. If you don’t, you may find it closed sooner rather than later. You’ve now been put on notice. Indeed, use it or lose it.
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