Household Bank and Best Buy have ruined my credit and also put me through hell for many months.
I purchased a new home computer through Best Buy. During that time, they were also offering a "no payment/no interest for 6 months on all home computers". When I went through the check out, the young lady asked if I would like to take advantage of this. I told her no and she then reminded me of the great promotion of no payments that they were offering. I thought about it and decided to put my printer and the accessories on my card, therefore I would have more money to purchase the other accessories that I needed to get. I hadn't used my Best Buy credit card in a few years.
I made this purchase the very beginning of December. Late January I realized that I hadn't gotten a statement. I knew that I didn't have to make any payments, but I did remember that when I had done this type of promotion with a different company, that they still sent me monthly statements. I waited a few more weeks. The beginning of February I called Best Buy and told them about my concern. They then directed me to Household Bank.
I finally got through to a customer service rep at the credit card company and explained the situation. She looked up my record and asked me if I lived at the address they had listed. I did not... Nor had I ever lived there! They then told me that I called them a month before and requested to change it to this address. I had not and told them that. They insisted that I did and told me that my account was now over 30 days delinquent and they also added on a late fee.
At this point I was very frustrated and told her of the promotion that I had signed up for. She said that it was never input under that promotion code and that it wasn't their problem and that I would have to go through Best Buy to straighten that out. I then told her to change my address to the correct one and asked her to send me out a statement ASAP. She said that she would do that and that she would go ahead and waive the late fee since I had gone through so many problems. I gave her my new address and got off the phone. I planned on just paying my account off in full instead of having to go through all this in a different phone call to Best Buy. A week or so had passed and I still had not gotten the statement.
I called Household again and talked to a different lady. I explained the entire story to her. She looked up my address and the strange/unknown address was still in the system. I got very frustrated and asked her why this strange address was in the system. She said that I had called in a week or so earlier and changed it to this address.By this time I was full blown pissed. I asked to talk to a manager.
When the so-called manager got on the phone, she was even ruder than the CSR. I explained the story for her from the very beginning. She basically told me that I was lying. She said that there was no way they would change my address on the system unless I called in and requested them to do so. She also told me that she suspects that I am calling in and changing my address just to avoid paying my bill. (At this point, I doubted that they directed me to a real manager) They still hadn't had my correct address in the system.
After a very long phone call of yelling and explaining to try to get this straightened out, I decided to just mail in the full payment to close the account. (yes, I even paid the late fee)
I closed the account hoping that I was all over and decided that I would NEVER have to deal with them again.
A few months later, I went to purchase a new car. When the car dealer ship pulled my credit report, it was perfect except for a delinquent payment. They stated that Household Bank had reported me for a 30-day late payment. This was absolutely horrible since I wasn't even my fault in the first place. Also, most credit card companies will not report you to the credit bureau for a payment that is only 30 days late.
So, now I am in the process of trying to correct my credit report without having to talk to Household Bank myself. They are an absolutely horrible and unprofessional company. I would recommend that people think twice before dealing with them...
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