iPhone Upgrade. Citizen One - loan payments

When you call the CitizensOne help line at 888-201-6306 be patient, If you do not have your loan number, as most of us don't, do not select any prompts. Let it timeout and finally ask "if you do not have your account number, please select *'. At that point select * and you will get routed to a person. I had a very nice and helpful person that was able to add my new credit card number. The VRU is worthless ****, but the people are very nice.

Ok, I discovered the solution.

1) Call Citizens One at 1-888-201-6306

2) When automated system asks for your 16 digit loan number just don't enter anything or say anything.

3) After asking you 3 or so times for the 16 digit loan number, the system will say We still haven't gotten your information, please hold for the next representative.

4) The rep can look up your loan number by your name after confirming your identity. Make sure to also ask for the amount of the first payment you made, because when you try to set up your online account it will ask you the amount of your first loan payment as an identity verification question.

If I were Apple, I would lean on CitizenOne to provide the stellar service that Apple customers are used to. Either that or dump them. Their service borders on the worst I have experienced with a financial company in 50 years. They were the finance company Apple recommended to me. They are so bad that they will definitely impact my decision to purchase a new phone from Apple in the future. One of my experiences follows:

I purchased an Apple 6 cell phone from Apple and used Apple recommended CitizenOne as the finance company. I wanted a receipt from CitizenOne every month to confirm payment and claim my business phone costs. Originally CitizenOne used to send out receipts by email. They stopped doing that about 6 months ago and I had to go through the same steps that are described above (Call Apple, Call CitizenOne, Call the Apple Store that I purchased the phone from).

I finally got to the right number at CitizenOne with the right account number and asked what happened to their email receipts. They said they stopped email receipts but I should log into their website - which from recollection does not offer receipts but does offer the ability to list payment history. This mechanism worked for several more months.

For the past three months their web site has been impossible to log into. With Safari - after logging in I just get a white page. If I use Firefox the page lists HTML errors and stops with them and a blank page. If I use Chrome - I think I get a white page. Tried to access both from a Mac (Safari, Chrome, Opera, Firefox) and from a PC (Edge, Explorer, Chrome, Firefox) without success.

When I called CitizenOne and asked how to get a receipt the representative's response was:

1) Log into the web site

2) When I said it did not work they suggested to delete all cookies

3) Tried it and it did not work. Plus it is really inconvenient to do that every month - even more so if it does not lead to a solution

I escalated to CitizenOne management. They said ... oh sorry our web site was being worked on over the weekend and is still not up (I called on a Tuesday). They said they would mail me a receipt.

1) That their web site has only had trouble over the weekend is BS because this has been going on for months

2) I believe it is a legal imperative that they offer a receipt to customers when requested.

3) I do not believe that I am the only customer experiencing this problem

4) I made the calls described above for last month's receipt on Tuesday this week. It is now Wednesday. Maybe I will get the receipt by mail ... maybe I will not. Time will tell.

It's been over a year and their site still doesn't work. I just went through this whole disaster, and when i asked Apple chat for help, they literally hung up on me. I can't believe I spent so much money with this company.

I had this problem too - I had to call the apple store where I bought the phone and have them send me a duplicate receipt. The loan agreement number is at the very bottom. When I called the apple store they told me they have nothing to do with citizens one and that the loan agreement number wasn't on there, they sent the receipt anyways and lo and behold, it was in fact on there. Pretty annoying that citizens one can't look you up by name/number/last 4 digits of the loan agreement, but at least there's a somewhat easy way to track it down.

Really is kind of a grind here to try and change credit cards from an expiring one. Absolute POC website at CitizenOne. Still haven't got thru their lame account creation site. Each time I try and register the account I get a blank page after agreement to their terms. Try a different browser (firefox) this gives an XHTML error. Plus, I purchased two phones... two accounts. Lord help me…. *****

<Edited by Host>

Late to the game here, but maybe this will help someone else. Ironically, mobile Safari can't be used to register. Firefox did not work either but finally, Chrome (iPad) worked. Regarding account info, I saved the letter from Citizens One which I received shortly after I purchased the phone. It had the account number and my first payment.

This works--I had no clue what this was when I got the email. My card expired I had on file, but the email was so vague and the site was terrible....I didn't know if it was real. This is the # that is on the receipt from the Apple store if you have it handy.

reply to pwabub: Your post was and is spot on. If by my own choice, I would have never used Citizen One. I never know when I'm going to receive a loan statements...they seem to come across about twice per year. And online access is a joke.

I have received notices from Apple that I can upgrade to a new phone, but I can't get into Citizen One to check when my last payment should have been made--yet they keep billing me. When I tried to check into their phone, a recording says they can't answer any questions about iPhone loans or upgrade programs!

I never received any loan number for my phone purchase, and I can't seem to contact Citizens one cause going through the website u need ur loan number to access the account or anything on their page and when I tried calling the first thing it asks for is your loan number which again I don't have nor do I remember receiving one, it doesn't let me get any further til the loan number is punched in...??

I seem to recal that the number (that they seem to go out of their way to hide!!) is somewhere on the original apple purchase receipt for the phone. I had the same issue. And god help you if you need to call them... and don't get me started on their portal... it's one of the worst apps I've ever had the displeasure to use... probably website vintage 1994, I'd say. Disgraceful that Apple picked these folks to do all this business wth. must be a kickback from Citizen One somewhere to some Apple exec in there somewhere.

I know this isn't terribly helpful but I wanted to add my experience to this thread as well.

My first year with Citizen's One, I had to cancel a credit card due to fraud and totally forgot it was the one I had set up to auto-pay my loan. Yeah, completely my fault. Absolutely no notification at all except finally getting a letter from them claiming that I was past due and about to be sent for collections. Finally got that straightened out after a lot of red tape.

Now, when I went to log in I had to change an expired password. No problem - done. Then it had me re-verify my security questions. These are questions that I absolutely know the answers to and was positive in my response. Except they didnt work. Failed a couple times and after the two hour lockout finally said "I forgot my questions". Then I was prompted to re-enter my first payment amount. Again, shouldn't have been a problem as I saved a picture of my receipt for just this occasion. Except it didnt accept this amount as valid and now on another two hour lockout. I need to update some credit card info and their online system makes access extremely difficult. What an absolutely horrible customer experience with this company. I NEVER receive any kind of receipt or statement or anything of the sort. I'm pretty sure a lender is required to send out certain notifications and statements as part of their compliance requirements don't they? I can't believe Apple continues to partner with Citizen's One considering their high standards.

This worked great. Thanks. My card number had changed due to the bank changing it due to a retail fraud. The rep I talked to was pretty painless and helped me get the card changed for two different iphones.

On your receipt from when you purchased the phone, you will find the "loan ID" (it's a 16 digit number). Take that loan number to www.citizensoneloan.com and register it. It will walk you through setting up your account. I just did it, so I know this works. I have two accounts and was able to link them both to one login.

Hope this helps!