I've been receiving calls from Citi numbers all week, at all sorts of odd hours. I'm a college student and I have just started school again after taking a year off, during which time I handled my responsibilities and paid my student loans on time with the little money I was making. This evening I answered the phone and for once waited through the "please hold for an important message" and silence (which I had thought was a telemarketer until I Googled the number). Once a real human came on the line, she tried to explain to me that I owed Citi $179 for my past due student loan payment and my October payment (the Oct payment technically shouldn't be due until the 25th). This upsets me and makes me think Citibank is shady for multiple reasons... First of all, I'm in school, and I know that Citibank receives that info automatically through a service called Clearinghouse, however back in August when I called to ask them about that, a rep told me that they don't and I needed to print out a form get it signed by "someone" at my school, and mail it in. I set out to do that, but before I could complete the task I received a form in the mail from Citi saying that they had "received info" that I was back in school, and I needed to mail back THAT form in order to have my payments deferred... I sent that back weeks ago, and when I told the caller that, she said, "Oh, let me check and see if we've received it, but if not, I can just update your status over the phone for you." Why couldn't the first person I spoke to in August do that?? She came back and told me they had it, but it was still "in process" and I would still receive calls until it was done being processed, but that I could stop that if I made a payment for $89 for September over the phone right now. She really asked me if I wanted to pay them $89 to stop calls that I shouldn't have been getting in the first place?? School started at the beginning of Sept and I'm in deferment! I pay dearly for deferment already in the form of capitalized interest... how dare these people try to extort another $89 (plus convenience fees for paying over the phone I'm sure) to stop these extraneous calls? ABSOLUTELY NOT.