The Right To Pay

Yesterday my boss came running into the office upset about her personal credit card account. It seems it was overdue even though she thought she paid it. She called in a payment and the call got cut off at the very end but she assumed the payment went through. She gave me the bill to call in the payment. I called Citibank and explained what happened. I told them that I wanted to pay her bill in full. They said that they needed her to get on the phone to authorize the payment. She was with a patient and I did not want to interrupt. Then I asked the representative a question. If I pay with the automated system, how does it know who I am? She had no answer. I was not taking money out of the account, I was paying it off. If I could do this over the phone without a live person, why couldn't I do it with a representative? The rules are the rules and I am not here to give a Citibank worker a hard time, so I interrupted the doctor to have her get on the phone to say it was ok for me to speak. They never asked any other security questions. Now, I would like to know how they really knew it was her.