Fighting the Evil Credit Card companies

March 14, 2005 8:42 AM

My credit card company just pulled a quick one on me. Despite my best efforts to resolve the situation with their customer service, I am going nowhere. What should be my next step?

In August 2004, I applied to a credit card online, through one of the well-known financial organizations. The offer I responded to was a 12 month 0% APR for balance transfers. The small text said that if I don't qualify for this offer, I might get an alternate offer of same rate for only 3 months, but I didn't think too much of it since I have a great credit history (FICO score of 775 with no late payments, no missed payments, etc. - except a new mortgage back in May 2004). So, I applied online and asked them to process a balance transfer from another credit card.

A couple weeks later I received a letter that says, "congratulations you've been accepted" and went on to say what my credit limit was and that my balance transfer was in process. Since the credit limit was lower than my balance transfer request, they said only an amount upto my limit would be processed. Nothing else. A week later, I received my welcome package which included my credit card, a benefits guide, and a generic terms and conditions legal statement. However, no new rate sheet that says what the APRs are, etc.

So I proceeded to make my monthly minimum payments and put a note on my calendar for 11.5 months to make sure I pay off the balance.

A few weeks ago, when I was doing my taxes, I had a chance to look over some of the past statements, and suddently noticed that they have been adding finance charges since November.

I called the customer service line. They told me that I was only accepted for the "alternate offer" which gave me only 3 months of 0% APR and not the original 12 months. They also told me since this alternate offer was included in the small text of the original application, they had no responsibility to inform me which offer I had been accepted under. After talking with a number of reps and supervisors, I, of course, got a number of different responses. A couple said they didn't have to let me know, another couple said it would have been in the acceptance letter, a fifth said I would have to had signed a statement accepting the new conditions, a sixth and a seventh said the conditions would have been in my welcome package. Of course, neither the acceptance letter nor the welcome package had anything in it, and I certainly didn't sign anything. One of the ladies (the one that said it should have been in the acceptance letter) told me that I should write to their "research dept.". So I did.

The research department essentially responded last week and told me that they don't care. They essentially didn't say anything other than the fact that that's the offer I was accepted under and thus I was responsible for the finance charges.

I have already transferred all my balance out (except for the disputed interest charges, which I left in the account). I know that I can pursue with BBB, FTC, State Attorney's Office, Small Claims Court, or Arbitration, etc., but will any of these get me anything? Is it worth my time or shall I just call the company evil, pay up the interest charges, and take my business elsewhere (I also have another card with them that I've been using for 10 years, so I would cancel that one too)?

If I should pursue, what is the best strategy? Do I pay off the disputed charges (since they continue to compound interest), or leave them there? Where do I send my complaint first? It's essentially a "I said, you said" situation. They are going to claim they sent me the new rates in the welcome envelope (the highest level supervisor I spoke to insisted that they would have sent it, so that will probably be their official line). I know I didn't get it (I'm pretty organized when it comes to filing things), but how do I prove I didn't get it?

Sorry for the long message, but I wanted to explain everything to make sure I get the best advice. Thanks in advance for all the advice.

posted by tuxster to work & money (23 answers total)

Small claims court, which will most liekly work out in your favor. I believe it costs the filer around 15$ to file a complaint, while it costs the accused over 200$ just to file a response. Once they get notified about the filing against them, they will most likely settle with you.
posted by skwm at 8:50 AM on March 14, 2005

Sounds like the classic bait-and-switch.

How much are these disputed charges? If they're less than $200, I'd say pay them off, cut your losses, and walk away. That's what I'd do. I understand the principle of the thing, but they did say they had the option to offer you only 3 months.

Not paying them while you dispute it could adversely affect your credit rating, and paying them indicates an acceptance.

Life is short, and you don't need the hassles. Pay it and walk away.
posted by crunchland at 8:51 AM on March 14, 2005

Tuxster, I see you are in Michigan USA, so I don't have specific advice re your story, save for this:

>I have already transferred all my balance out (except for the disputed interest charges, which I left in the account). I know that I can pursue with BBB, FTC, State Attorney's Office, Small Claims Court, or Arbitration, etc., but will any of these get me anything? Is it worth my time or shall I just call the company evil, pay up the interest charges, and take my business elsewhere (I also have another card with them that I've been using for 10 years, so I would cancel that one too)?

First - it depends on the amount that you feel you have overpaid.

They are counting on you to be passive in this regard. Yes, there are a lot of steps to take to get this sorted out. I would contact the BBB because your credit card issuer may be a member. The inquiry to the BBB will be seen dimly by the BBB if the credit card issuer is at fault.

AND, I would get legal advice. Get a trained set of eyes to review the acceptance letter, and get them to make inquiries as to why, despite your high FICO score, you got such a raw deal.

THEN review your options. I would get the lawyer to write a letter to the credit card company. This would have costs attached - would you rather do nothing and 'save' money and then wonder what could have been, or would you rather take action, pay a bit of money to a lawyer and see all the options available to you. Best of luck.
posted by seawallrunner at 8:52 AM on March 14, 2005

Perhaps you could tell us the name of the company so that others don't fall into the trap?
posted by ontic at 8:58 AM on March 14, 2005

"pay a bit of money to a lawyer"

tuxster: find out first just how much that 'bit of money' will be since that will be coming out of your pocket up front.
posted by mischief at 9:02 AM on March 14, 2005

Thanks for the initial responses. I'll keep a tally: we have 1 vote for Small Claims Court, 1 vote to involve a lawyer, and 1 vote to walk away.

The disputed charges are a little less than $200 (for now). I don't have a problem of paying this off from a financial standpoint, but it would suck in principal, of course. As such, it's not large enough to involve a lawyer, I don't think...

On preview: ontic, I hesitate to mention the name of the company, but it is the same as the last name of the famous comedian that played the lead role in Fletch and the National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.
posted by tuxster at 9:10 AM on March 14, 2005

Tuxster: Unless you want to bring this into court and then fight for years to get it off of your credit reports, I'd say just give in and pay them. I dealt with a $30 mischarge from 10 years ago that just would not go away, and almost stopped my mortgage from being approved. I ended up having to pay it, even after sending multiple letters to the credit agencies and the creditor. It wasn't worth the time or money anymore. It just kept reappering, no matter what I did.

Ontic: I'm going to guess Capital One or Citibank. They pull shit like this constantly.
posted by bh at 9:13 AM on March 14, 2005

I'd encourage you to walk away before you get an ulcer. However, if this sort of challenge is interesting and fun for you and won't raise your blood pressure, here is what I would do.

1. Contact the state attorney general's office. Have a clear outline of what you did and what they did. Figure out what you would like them to do "I would like to have the last three months' of finance charges removed from my bill because of XYZ reason" work through it with them. CC an initial letter to the better business bureau and some important people at the bank in quesiton [customer service people, president, whatever] make this a paper letter, do not email, do not call.

NOTE: the fact that you didn't discover you were getting finance charges for a few months will not work in your favor, find a way to explain this, or offer to meet them halfway over this, appear to be agreeable. Make sure you have gone through all the steps of contesing the fees so you are not accruing more fees in the meantime.

2. At some point, the AGs office will either make some phone calls and solve the problem or drop it back in your lap saying "sorry we've done all we can" this is when you go to small claims court. Have all your paperwork, make nice copies for the judge, have a clear idea of what you want them to do, explain that you have already tried very hard to work this out with the bank and spoke to the AG. Be reasonable, but be firm and if you can track down the paperwork they gave you with the card [and show where it doesn't say anything about this reduced rate] do that.

3. If this works, hurray! If, by this point you have not found any solution, I'd cancel your other credit card with them, pay the money, write a nasty letter to them, do some deep breathing exercises and leave it all behind.

Good luck in any case, the tracking you've done about all this can only help, especially the conflicting answers you got from the seven customer service people at the bank.
posted by jessamyn at 9:37 AM on March 14, 2005

Well, I don't mean to rain on your parade or anything, but I also can't help but fault the consumer for not being aware of what he has gotten himself into until after the fact.

Your first mistake was applying online. As far as I know, you should never apply for a credit card that includes a balance transfer online or by mail. If you must apply, apply by phone and find out what the terms are when talking to the customer service agent. In most cases they will be able to tell you your credit line, the rate that you qualify for, and what balance transfer deals you may qualify for.

Your second mistake was not paying close enough attention to your statements. The fact that you didn't notice the credit card company was charging interest on the balance transfer until three or four months later leads me to believe that you didn't look closely enough at the statements the first time around. Usually, in the case of a no-interest or low-interest balance transfer, on the line where that balance is noted, there will also be a date listed showing how long that offer is valid. I'm not sure whether it was there or not -- but it SHOULD BE.

Credit card companies run a ridiculous business, and it was certainly a despicable thing for them to not send a bright and shiny letter informing you that you did not qualify for the offer included in your pre-approved application. HOWEVER, that is no excuse for you to not be aware of the terms of your agreement, or to make the effort to find out what the terms are if they are less than clear. Frankly, I find it a little lackadaisical that it took you three months (!!!!!) before you looked at a statement closely enough to realize that you were being charged interest on the transfer.

Never, ever, ever trust someone else to do right by your money enough not to pay attention to it -- esp if that someone else is sending you daily or weekly offers to help you take care of your debts at amazing rates. It's a sham, for sure, but it's no excuse for a consumer not to be informed enough to know what he's getting into.
posted by dogmatic at 9:45 AM on March 14, 2005

I'd agree with dogmatic and say I don't really see what the credit card company did wrong. You knew in advance that there were two different offers available, so you really should have checked which one you got. And there are plenty of reasons why the acceptance letter didn't say which offer you got; maybe a "You've been accepted!" letter gets sent out automatically when they open an account for someone, and the program that generates it doesn't know there was another offer you were rejected for. Using poorly-thought-out middleware does not make them "Evil".

So in answer to your question: Don't waste your time with this.
posted by cillit bang at 10:05 AM on March 14, 2005

FICO score of 775 with no late payments, no missed payments, etc

There's your problem. You're a deadbeat in their eyes because they're not going to make any money off you in late payments. There was an excellent frontline special about the credit card companies a little while back (watch it here if you want to get even more outraged). Lawyers are the only thing that will make them give a shit.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 10:40 AM on March 14, 2005

I have found that the words "bait and switch" work wonders. Email them non-stop, be righteously indignant - after all, they di need to notify you of the terms of your account AFTER you are accepted, the "small print" beforehand is just not good enough to satisfy all of their legal requirements, at least here in California - and do not let up. Make a point of saying what you did here - that you got completely inconsistent information from a number of supervisors, and that all of it is inconsistent with the law in this situation, which would (again, only in California, but I think most states would require the same) require a signature on a new, explicit contract for if it were significantly different than the offer you first responded to. Failing that, simply email your local State Senator's district office and tell them what happened; the District Representatives are well-trained at dealing with these folks, and their job is to mediate constituent problems.
posted by luriete at 10:43 AM on March 14, 2005 [1 favorite]

jessamyn's number three is especially fun because they have to pay for someone to show up at small claims or you'll get a default judgement in most cases.
posted by Mitheral at 10:49 AM on March 14, 2005

Yep, you should have listened to the small print. They DID tell you that they might offer a different rate (and, this is SO common now it shouldn't have surprised you). And, you should have been checking the statements each month.

They didn't mislead you, they did exactly what credit card companies have been doing for a while now.

Save yourself the ulcer, i don't think you can win this one.
posted by HuronBob at 10:52 AM on March 14, 2005

Now that I know the amount of money that is in question, let me amend my advice.

Forget the lawyer. Pay up what is owed to the credit card company, and chalk it up to 'education'.

I would suggest advising the watchdog agencies of what happened. I still stand by my suggestion to call BBB regarding this issue, and I would also alert the AG and other agencies that watch this type of miscommunication/fraud.
posted by seawallrunner at 11:06 AM on March 14, 2005

I had a mortgage issue last year with a firm previously mentioned in this thread, and argued a bit, and they caved. Apparently, putting the complaint in writing did the trick. It sounds like you already did that, but you may want to see if there are any other departments you can try it with (besides "Research"). One of the things I pointed out in my protest letter is that we had refinanced with them because they were so good to me the first time, but that, through no fault of my own, I'd been labeled a "bad customer" (they had mis-allocated some money to principle rather than current interest, making my current account appear overdue, even though I had paid ahead compared to the original amortization schedule). In such an argument, your existing 10-year account is an asset demonstrating your value to them as a customer.

It probably won't work, but you might get lucky like I did. (Ironically, they didn't correct the problem until we were in the final stages of refinancing with another institution and we ended up leaving them anyway.)
posted by Doohickie at 11:07 AM on March 14, 2005

If you submitted the whole story in writing to their research department and they didn't rule in your favor, you're not going to get anything out of them.

Getting the black mark from unpaid charges removed from your credit report makes the experience you're describing look like a day in the park.
posted by desuetude at 11:13 AM on March 14, 2005

I still stand by my suggestion to call BBB regarding this issue

I think this would be even less productive than a letter-writing campaign, just because they've most likely already been reported to the BBB. Credit card companies are the #1 most-reported companies to the BBB (by a substantially large margin).
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 11:17 AM on March 14, 2005

A couple of thoughts -

(1) Don't get behind in payments, if/while you fight this. In other words, when the credit card company sends you your next monthly billing, MAKE THE MINIMUM PAYMENT. You won't ruin your credit unless you stop paying. In general, it is NOT true that paying something you dispute constitutes "acceptance" of the charges, although it does make it more difficult to get to where you think you should be (because they will need to give you a credit).

(2) Read the fine print. I think that the standard terms of most credit card cards (which you accepted by default) specify that you have to go through arbitration if you don't agree with what you were charged. And you may have to pay for arbitration if you lose (again, read the fine print). This is probably the first thing a lawyer would ask about, and it may prevent your small claims case from being heard.

(3) I think you should file a complaint with the AG's office, and the BBB, and the FTC, if you want to spend the time. You're correct that this is essentially your word against their word (as to whether you were properly notified), but if enough people complain of the same thing, then there becomes a presumption that there is a problem. In any case, these fall into the category of "free payback", even if nothing is likely to happen. (And nothing is likely to happen; this is simply too small, and too ambiguous.)

(4) Your most likely route of success - probably fairly small as well - is to write a letter to the company (ideally, to an official, rather than the customer service address, where folks are paid not to care), saying (1) that you were not notified appropriately; (2) that - without going into much detail - that your calls have resulted in a wide variety of conflicting responses; and (3) although the matter doesn't involve enough money, you're very disappointed in the company and intend, if there is no satisfactory resolution within [pick a number, say] 30 days, to terminate your other credit card with the company. Also mention that you have filed complaints with the AG and BBB (assuming you have done so).

(5) The best payback probably is to post the name of the company to this page, along with a link to the company's website. I don't think you've said anything that is false or libelous - you've simply presented your side - and this might serve as warnings to others who might google this page.
posted by WestCoaster at 11:54 AM on March 14, 2005

dogmatic, points well taken! I don't necessarily agree with your comment about the online application: My wife applied to a card a couple years ago, over the phone and all they did was to take the information and then said: we can't make the decision right now, we'll let you know in a couple weeks by postal mail. I don't think my assumption that I would be disclosed my exact terms and conditions (or that I didn't qualify for the main offer), after the acceptance of my application is naive. Yet, I admit, I should not have assumed "status quo" and should have checked with them when I got the welcome packet and there was no rate disclosure.

Believe me, I've hit my against enough walls, particularly regarding the "Second mistake". I always look at my statements, and I can't believe that I missed this for three months straight. I think I was so unsuspecting (especially since I've had a good working relationship with them in the past) that when it came to this credit card, I only looked at the statement to see what the minimum monthly payment was and processed it. By the way they don't mail statements, only provide them on their website (otherwise you can't pay your bills online). I think that was a part of the problem as well, since you need a different level of awareness when looking at an electronic statement then a paper statement in your hand.

Finally, dogmatic, no, nowhere on the statements does it say when the balance transfer offer runs out. I looked at all my statements multiple times to see if I could find it, but it simply isn't there, which is another reason why I'm so angry at this company.

cillit bang, I obviously don't share your thoughts, since the two offers are not on equal footing. Clearly, they market their cards with the main offer, the alternative offer is only in small text and isn't emphasized at all. Therefore, I don't think the assumption that you would be notified if you don't get the original offer is so unreasonable. Having bad middleware shouldn't be an excuse for a financial multinational's abuse of consumer rights.

Based on WestCoaster's last point and also to clarify my response to cillit bang: The company in question is Chase. The specific credit card is Chase Cashbuilder. The same deal is still offered. If you read under "Rates and Fees" on that page, it only mentions the 12 month deal, with a "*" behind it. Only when you go into the Disclosure Statement, is there any mention of a "Preferred Pricing" and a "Standard Pricing".
posted by tuxster at 12:17 PM on March 14, 2005

Contacting the BBB will get you a guaranteed response from someone who, hopefully, will be more poised to address your issue than those to date. It likely might be the same "research team" to whom you've already spoken, but I would guess they would be better prepared to resolve the issue. The BBB isn't omnipotent, nor do they claim to take *sides* per se, but involving them certainly affects the equation - generally in favor of the customer.

Calling in extra firepower from the BBB is essentially like telling your mom when your sibling takes your toys. It might not stop him from taking your toys in the future (nor the toys of others), but when your mom is standing beside you, he'll reluctantly give in... if only to appease her.

At least my experiences with the BBB have been like that. It normally takes the form of: CompanyX won't resolve issue, Email BBB, Get a call from CompanyX saying "We want to resolve this to close the inquiry by the BBB," Followup letter from BBB.

Most state BBB offices take submissions via email, so all you really need to do is tidy up your post a little bit and copy/paste. It's that easy, and you don't have anything to lose. One suggestion if you go that route: Make sure you state the problem/reason for writing in the first sentence to qualify it a little better & engage them easier. For example, "I'm writing to notify you about a problem I'm having with my credit card provider, Chase Manhattan Bank, in which the company is making claims of obligation that were not sufficiently communicated to me." State your issue to provide context, and then have-at it with the details.

(and please keep us/me updated -- i've toyed with the idea of creating a repository of customer complaint letters in order to help others compose their own letters in the valiant struggle for positive customer experiences.)
posted by Hankins at 1:08 PM on March 14, 2005

If you do take up a letter writing campaign, one useful strategy is to examine the company's SEC filings to get the address of the company's principal executive offices, as well as the names of the officers and directors. You should cc them on any correspondence you send to the company.
posted by monju_bosatsu at 1:37 PM on March 14, 2005

Calling in extra firepower from the BBB is essentially like telling your mom when your sibling takes your toys.

It's more like calling in, let's say, the tiny fleet that got swallowed by a dog in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The BBB is a private (not-for-profit) entity, paid for by its member businesses, with no regulatory or enforcement power whatever. Basically the worst thing that happens to a company that doesn't resolve its BBB complaints in a timely fashion is that the complaints stack up in the company's BBB file. If a customer calls the BBB to inquire about the company, they'll be told there are a lot of unresolved complaints, but how many customers call the BBB before doing business with an unfamiliar company? Hardly any. In very egregious cases the BBB might issue a press release about the misbehaving company, leading to some news coverage and negative publicity for the offender, but very few cases rise to that level.

You'd probably do better trying to get local media interested in this story, but if they've already had a "banks are greedy bastards" story in the last couple of months then your situation isn't actually news.
posted by kindall at 2:55 PM on March 14, 2005