This theiving company ruined my credit before I even knew what it meant to have credit. As a senior in high school, I purchased a gateway computer with a $1,900 loan through MBNA Bank of America. The computer cost about $1,500. I was working at the time and payments were easy to make. However, a couple of years into the loan I fell ill with depression, anxiety disorder and minor agoraphobia and was unable to keep up with the payments because I was out of work and still in treatment.
Although, I informed MBNA of the situation I was in, they refused to try to work with me, increased my interest rate to nearly 50% and added fees that made it impossible for me to catch up.
Over the years, I kept trying to pay the account off. The total amount of the payments I actually made add up to just over $1900 but because of the ridiculous interest rates and fees, the amount that MBNA said I owed was about $3,000 more. I offered them a settlement when I finally came to the realization that no matter what I did, I would never be able to repay the loan.
The loan went to collection. I went to CCCS in Knoxville, TN about the loan situation when I got no response to my settlement letter and was told that by that time the best thing I could do was to wait a couple of years for the amount to be removed from my credit report. We didn't know at the time but in order to keep the item on my credit report, every few months MBNA would open the account and close it again. Because they keep doing that the item is scheduled to stay on my report until IF they don't open it again.
A couple of years ago, MBNA sold the account to a collection agency who has added another $4,000 making the total collection amount $8,474.00. A charge of $8,474 for a loan that was $1,900, more than 4 times the original amount, does that seem fair or reasonable to you? If I had been loaned this money from a private individual and they did this same thing, the person could go to jail for loan sharking.
Now I have a collection item for the $8,474 on my credit report as well as the $4,537 that MBNA still refuses to remove from my report even though they acknowledge that they have sold the account to collection and that the account was closed over 7 years ago.
I have got to fight this but I don't know who to turn to for help. I recognize that I made some horrible decisions when I was younger with regard to my credit because I didn't understand its importance back then but this is ridiculous and it should be illegal.
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