I needed new tires for my SUV so I priced them online at Discount Tire for about $1600. A lot of money to lay out at once so I applied for their credit card. It was approved but only for $1000. So, when I purchased the tires, I applied the $1000 of my new credit line and paid the rest by debit card. The salesman talked me into buying about $250 worth of tire insurance, which evidently he applied to the credit card, putting me over my limit.
He never mentioned it would put me over the limit or did he ask for additional money, which I would have paid.
So, before receiving my first bill, I got an alert from a credit monitoring service I subscribe to. Checking the alert, it showed me that GE Capital, who handles credit for Discount Tire credit cards, had reported me as "derogatory" to credit bureaus because I was over my limit. I immediately called GE Capital and got some lady who was not sympathetic to my situation at all. She just said they had to do it that way and there was nothing she could do.
I imagine reporting me to the credit bureau as derogatory was probably an automated response based on some ill-defined business rule coded into their software system, but to not even try to address my issue by correcting thi wrong is inexcusable.
Now, I have a bad mark on my credit report for 7 years all because GE Capital doesn't care about their customers.
0 comments