We had a no-interest account with Citifinancial Retail Services for furniture purchased from Rooms To Go. We made an additional furniture purchase on 6/22, and the Rooms To Go rep said he was rolling both accounts together. We had made a deposit or spot payment at the store at that time. We did not receive anything from Citifinancial for two and a half months after the purchase.
At that point we were late on a payment. I called their Customer Service, and they said they had been sending statements and had no returned mail. To their credit, at this point they waived the late fee, and I thought everything was fine. The next statement came, and they had cancelled the no-interest plans and started charging 23.99%. I called their Customer Service department again and received what I thought was good news: they were going to investigate what happened and get back to me the next day. They also said that the no-interest plans would only be terminated after 3 months of non-payment, and that they had received returned mail during the so-called period of non-payment.
Mind you, there had not been a problem with our statements arriving before, and we had kept our account paid and current. Of course, no call came the next day, and I had to call in again. This time I was told that they had terminated the no-interest plans and that the person I had talked to previously was mistaken. The issue was all my fault for failure to pay, regardless of the statement issue. I escalated the issue to the next supervisor and was told the same thing again. They offered the dispute address and fax number. I can only assume, with practices such as these, that the dispute department is a PO Box with a direct feed into the trash can. I feel they deliberately delayed sending statements and laid the blame squarely on me in order to nullify the no-interest agreement and begin charging me 23.99% interest, which is obviously in their financial interest, as opposed to a no-interest plan.
A cursory call to Rooms To Go resulted in nothing to my benefit, with them stating the issue was between Citifinancial and me. I have asked for the total payoff amount, and a payment in full will be on its way to Citifinancial. I refuse to do future business with Citifinancial and Rooms To Go, and I would adamantly dissuade anyone else from doing business with these two companies, which engage in shady business practices to rip people off. Just a quick search on the web turned up numerous hits of individuals being ripped off in the same manner by these two companies. I only wish I had done the proper research beforehand and spared myself the anguish of dealing with these two deceptive companies.
0 comments