Sears MasterCard has billing and payment systems which do not work properly, customer service representaives who have false, absurd information which adds to your distress and destroys your confidence in them, customer service representatives who refer you to an address to file inquries/requests/complaints, which entity (the address they refer you to) refers you back to customer service, customer service reperesntatives who have an attitude and then tell you they and Sears will not help you.
This cycle continues while your bill goes unpaid due to the onging dispute, which they refuse to actually discuss or to resolve. It appears that Sears MasterCard's system, procedures and policies are designed to make you later and later on paying your bill so that Sears can increase its income with late fees and high interest rate charges due to you being placed in late status.
They also have a contract which legally prohibits class action lawsuits, in advance. I am suspecting that Sears MasterCard does a lot of bad stuff to a lot of people, and a class action lawsuit is needed to get them to stop. If anyone is interested in joining me on the class action lawsuit, let's communicate about this. I intend to find out if the Supreme Court has already ruled on this, or would this make a good case to bring to the Supreme Court, or to whatever level court is necessary to test the legality of a ban on class action lawsuits via contract.
I will try to brief about what Sears did to me. At one point, I first discovered the problems with their Speedpay system because of a surprising phone call. I normally paid the minimum amount due on my credit card bill, about $33. If I ever got late and paid within the month it was due, but after the due date, I would pay something like $100. This was fine, since it was my fault, and I would pay this, and then everything would be normal the next month, with the minimum due going back to about $33.
But one month last summer, I paid the $118 due to a late payment.By my records, this was actually September. Then, after I paid the bill, I got a collector phone call. The collector said I owed $118. I said I just paid $118. She said this was a SECOND $118 I now owed. I knew that was screwy but later cleared it up when I realized the Speedpay system, which, supposedly, lets you pay by check over the phone, had not worked properly. I talked to customer service and got the $118 paid. (My records show a successful payment of $118 in September.)
Later on, I was late paying but still paid within the month, this time in November. This time, due to being late, the payment was $150: $140 due plus $10 fee for Speedpay. After that, I got a bill showing I made the payment, thanking me for the payment, and then stating that I had immediately turned around and made a PURCHASE for $150, and that I owed $150. I called customer service and was told some bizarre thing about me having recently signed something that put me on a system which greatly increased my monthly amount due if I were ever late, or some such thing. I had never seen nor heard of nor signed such an agreement.
This lady had no clue as to what was going on and only added to my distress by coming out with bizarre claims like that. Finally, she got a supervisor, who discovered that the real problem was that the Speedpay payment had simply not worked, again.
I do not have this problem with any other credit card company nor any other credit card company's pay-by-check-over-the-telephone system. Only with Sears MasterCard. Sears Speedpay system has many problems. The set of problems include the fact that there is no comfirmation of what you entered. Most banking, credit, etc., phone systems repeat any information you have entered, and ask you to, say, press "1" if correct of "2" if incorrect. Sears Speedpay does not, or at least did not, whenever I used it. Also, it does not let you know if the transaction succeeded.
In any case, if the transaction does not succeed, you should see that stated on your bill, clearly.instead, the Sears billiing system will acknowledge an attempted payment as a successful payment. Then it will claim you made a charge to the same amount, and that you still owe that same amount (or more).
Sears MasterCard first line CSRs seem to always have wrong info, and cannot help with the problem at all. They always have to get their supervisors. I am not going to attempt to list every phone call and its results. But after the Speedpay system rebuffed my payment in November, which I did not know had occurred, and I had made that payment in good faith (their bill even says so!), I was in contact with a CSR in December.
She had wrong info and was confused herself, claiming I had only owed $33 in Movember but had paid $150, when I had owed $140 and had paid that plus $10 Speedpay fee. On this or another phone call, the CSR was so confused and misinformed she agreed to get the supervisor. Then my phone went dead (battery), while waiting for the supervisor to come on line. I was busy, and calling Sears MasterCard was proving repeatedly pointless and distressing, already.
So I did not get to calling back again until later in December.By now, the December due date had passed. On this second December phone call, the first line CSR, as always, was misinformed and had to get a supervisor. I almost straightened things out with this supervisor, this time. But then she said there was a prbolem. She said that because I now was late for two months payments in a row (my good faith payment in November plus missing the December date), Sears system had placed me in a special status.
I asked for details about what this status meant, including what it meant as to the minimum monthly amount due from now on. She couldn't tell me the details but there was a hint that my minimum amount due each month would be significantly higher now, plus other things, like late fees and possibly higher interest rates, would apply. I asked if she had the authority to resolve this problem, since I had paid in good faith for the first of those two months. She said she had no authority and told me the address to write to.
I wrote to the address for billiing problems that she gave me, once in December, receiving no reply, and again in January, this time with certified mail.in this letter which I sent twice, I explained the whole problem with Sears MasterCard, three pages, single spaced, printed out on my computer. To the one I sent certified mail, I received a form letter response. It said to call customer service. It gave the same customer service number which I always had called, where the people couldn't help me.
It was the run arouhnd. But just to be sure, I called, and, as always, the CSR who answered had no clue. I had sent a 3 page, single spaced, typed letter with no mention of a late fee in it. She said something about, I wanted a $39 late fee removed?
I told her we were wasting each other's time. Which was true. Customer service had already told me it had no authority to resolve the dispute. And she, like all their CSRs, was clueless, besides. So I terminated that phone call.
I dealt with it again in March. I sent a third letter, which included a copy of the previous letter. Again, certified mail. Again, a form response told me to call customer service. So I did.
I explained things to this guy (a supervisor) up to the point that he cut me off and asked what I wanted. I told him I wanted what I had been requesting in my letters: to be taken off special status due to having missed payments since November (I was paying nothing in this dispute mode), saying I had paid in good faith in November and had been rebuffed then and ever since in trying to get Sears to straighten things out and let me pay what I REASONABLY owed.
I was requesting that I pay Sears the $140 that I had PAID in November, in good faith (again, their bill acknowledged that as a PAYMENT!), plus the normal $33 a month that I WOULD HAVE PAID, each month since, if Sears had straightened this out at the beginning. Plus, understandably, the normal interest rate on those small, unpaid amounts (the $140 for Nov. Plus the $33 a month since then). And that this make my account current and I return to the normal status, owing the normal $33/month minimum payment. (By now, Sears is requiring that I pay a minimum of over $900.)
I told this supervisor that I had written these letters to the only place, according to customer service, that had the authority to resolve the dispute. He did not have access to the letters, blew off my explanation and request, copped an attitude and said Sears would never agree to such a request as I was making. I plied him for info as to, 'Is this the final word?', 'Do you have the authority to say this for Sears?', 'How do you know they would never approve such a request?' He insisted, yes, this is the final word, etc.; he said his knowledge of Sears policies made him know that Sears would never resolve this dispute by agreeing to what I was reqeusting, I hadn't paid my bill in months, etc. He also said I did not pay in October, when my records, which I looked up immediately after the phone call, show that I had. He said all this with an obnoxious attitde.
I asked his name, so that I could have record that I made the phone call and tried to settle the dispute. He refused to give it to me. I said I understood that for security reasons he might not need to be personally identified, but I had to have proof the conversation occurred. What about a confirmation number? He said no such thing was available. Finally, he gave what he claimed was his employee number, BCI006.
The Sears form letters always say, merely 'we received your communication, ' and then claim 'we want to settle this as quickly and conveniently as possible.' And always tell me to call customer service to resolve it. Obviously, this is a lie. They have no desire to settle this at all. As per employee BCI006. As per the fact that customer service can't and won't resolve it, and sends to me to the letter-receiving entity, which refers me back to customer service.
This experience, and things I am reading on complaint and elsewhere, indicate to me that Sears MasterCard (which, as I understand it, is run by or related to CitiBank and/or CitiCard) is like an MLM business, in the sense that MLMs get profit at least as much from selling dealerships as they do from selling a legitimate product. Sears MasterCard system and policies appear to be designed to make it difficult in some instances to pay one's bill, and difficult to resolve things via customer service (or anyone else), so as to make one have to pay late fees and high bills due to being placed in late status.
I am so far under the impression Sears MasterCard must mess with a lot of people in similar sorts of ways. If a company, effectively, sets out to mess with lots of people, then I hope that our laws or courts will decide that class action lawsuit is an inherant right, and cannot be denied by contract. It might be a good test case for the Supreme Court, even! I am interested in pursuing this possibility and want to be in contact with those who think this is a reasonable possibility.
Robert
High Point, North Carolina
U.S.A.
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