Usacomplaints.com » Business & Finance » Complaint / Review: Sears Gold MasterCard - Ripoff, lied to, assessed late fee and increased APR to 30.34% on transfer, ripoff. #141240

Complaint / Review
Sears Gold MasterCard
Ripoff, lied to, assessed late fee and increased APR to 30.34% on transfer, ripoff

I have had the Sears Gold MasterCard account for less than 1 year. I have never been late on any payments to Sears or other credit cards. I received a promo offering 0% interest for 4 months, to Jan. 2006. I was paying around 5% on $2040 and thought I would save a few bucks, as I make $500 (avg) payment on the other credit card acct. And would have this paid by Jan.

I sent in the Sears Convenience check to my other credit card company to pay off the balance, $2039.92. When I received my first bill with the transfered balance, I was shocked! My account had been charged a $39 late fee. Worried because I had just transfered over $ I called to find out if this would affect my interest rate. I was told by Ms. Perkins, No they would reverse the late charge and my interest rate would remain the same.

The Late Fee was applied because I had a $7.98 balance that was owing from the month before. I never received a bill for it. Since I don't keep a balance on the card every month, I don't always get a bill. I explained to Ms. Perkins and she said yes, you are never late with your payments. I said, you can check my credit history on my other accounts, as I am never late. She said I had to make a minimum payment of $64, so I said, I will make the check for $400 for this month's payment. I thanked her for taking care of the problem and hung up.

I just received my Sears Gold MasterCard bill again. This time my account shows a $46.29 finance charge with the APR at 30.34%, and the balance includes the $39.00 late fee. I immediately called the Sears Bill inquiry 800 and spoke with Kelly. Kelly informed me that they cannot remove any late fees or finance charges from the bill, that is done by their billing dept and no one can call them, not even the customer service reps - all communications must be done by email. They send them an email requesting removal of the late fee or finance charges.

I said, why was I told by Ms. Perkins that the charges would be reversed and I would receive the promo interest rate? She didn't know. She said she would email the info to the billing dept. And it would take 7 to 10 days before I would hear back from them. I was speechless and said, okay, thanks, goodbye.

Next morning, I decided I didn't like that response and would call back during regular daytime hours and see if I could get a better answer, and maybe have the luck to speak with someone that knew what they were doing and wasn't just repeating pre-arranged responses to questions. I got Brittany. She was a big help. She read to me what Ms. Perkins and Kelly had written about my account and neither one had mentioned or requested that the 0% APR remain the same. They had only requested the $39 late fee be waived.

Our standards of what passes as a "good" employee have really become so relaxed that anyone apparently can be a manager or employee anymore. Brittany said she couldn't really do anything more and and asked if I would like to speak to a manager. I said yes, of course, and Don came on the line.

Don had already been apprised of the situation by Brittany and apparently did not pay much attention to what Brittany said nor spend anytime looking at my account before speaking with me. He asked me, didn't I know that I had written the convenience check on the account? He asked what the statement date was on the statement (that I didn't get). I said, I don't know, I never got the statement but the balance was only $7.98 as it shows as a previous balance on last month's statement, with the late charge of $39.00. I said this is ridiculous... To have $85 in charges and not a 30.34% APR because of a $7.98 past due amount, for which I never received a bill.

I said you can check my credit history of all my accounts, not just Sears, and see that I am never late on any payments. Don said that my credit history with them was less than a year and basically they wouldn't bother. That really gets me as they will use any late payment on any other non-Sears account as a reason to up their APR, but will not look at the good credit history to fix an error on their part. Don said they send their bills out, so I should have received it. I said, I should have, but didn't. Does he think every piece of mail sent is delivered?

Finally Don agreed to drop the finace charges this time of $46.29 but couldn't drop both the late fee and finance charges. I let Don know that it will be easier to send them a check for the balance on the account rather than to deal with them and taht I will be cancelling my Sears Gold MasterCard. What a ripoff. I feel they have misrepresented themselves to me and misled me, because I would have paid this account off last month and been done with it, if only they had told me the truth then.

Terry
Roseburg, Oregon
U.S.A.


Offender: Sears Gold MasterCard

Country: USA   State: Nevada   City: The Lakes
Address: PO Box 6564
Phone: 8006698488

Category: Business & Finance

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