Beware! Gemb; the business practices of this preditory lender should be posted on every front page news paper in the world.
First, my empathy goes to all of you who like me learned the hard way about this lender. My issue does not involve large dollars, but never the less, I take it personally when an attempt to extort money from me is attempted.
The following is my response letter to Traci L Nowlin-Rotane, Manger, Corporate Consumer Relations for GE Money-Sams Club Discover. Please, as you read, note all the issues involved with what was essentially a $1.60 debt they claim I owed them. A copy of this letter was forward to the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS). As of this date, I am waiting for their response to my complaint:
I am in receipt of your letter dated January 7, responding to my correspondence to the Office of Thrift Supervision. I offer the following response.
To begin, I find your business practices to be deceptive and predatory.in addition, you violated your own rules regarding late fee charges and several FTC rules regulating your industry. Personally, I view your negligent and malicious billing practice, as an attempt to extort money and loan sharking. Therefore, I will not complacently allow myself, to submit to this type of business practice.
First, the statement dated 5/14/07 charged a late fee of $29.00 for the $355.31 payment you received and claimed I sent this late. Because I paid the full balance due on the prior statement of $355.31 and advised over the phone by your customer representative the late fee would be waived, it then seemed reasonable for me to assume the debt owed for this period was paid in full. This late fee adjustment was not completed until 6/29/07 and not reflected on my monthly statement until the 7/14/07 statement. Therefore, the statement for 6/14/07 still reflected the previous balance due after my payment of $355.31 including the late fee and some interest. I did correctly assume the adjustment for the late fee had not yet been completed as of the date of the 6/14/07 statement. So as a result, I only paid the amount of the new charges of $283.17, again believing once the adjustments were completed this matter would be fully resolved.
This of course did not happen; I received another statement stating I owed a total of $17.60 ($1.60 int $1.00 stmt fee $15.00 late fee). I then contacted your customer service representative about the issue and he advised I did not pay the full balance still due of $2.60. Please take note of the fact; I did exceed the minimum amount due on each statement prior to the 7/14/07 statement. Also note the amount of purchases I had accrued on billing statement 5/14/07 only added up to $282.17, not what the statement had reflected as the actual amount of purchases which was $283.17, this $1.00 was then adjusted later to cause the amount not paid to be $1.60. Therefore, as a result of this conversation with your customer representative, I promptly wrote a letter to dispute the billing on statement dated 7/14/07, copy of this letter dated, August 1 attached. Then the same day I received your letter confirming receipt of my dispute letter the collection agency, NCO started calling me. I informed them the bill they were pursuing was in formal dispute, and that I had received correspondence from you stating my letter to you was received. Nevertheless, they continued calling, endlessly, several times daily, including Saturdays and Sundays for three months. I also viewed my credit report and noticed each of these three months you show my payment as being late.
FTC Rules do not allow you to turn disputed billings over to collection agencies.
FTC Rules do not allow you to take any action to collection a debt that is in dispute, including reporting my payment (s) as being late/unpaid to credit reporting agencies.
Your letter dated Aug 23 did not address the issue of the $17.60 disputed, but rather dealt with an issue which had been resolved prior to my dispute letter.
I also hope the OTS investigates this billing as a form of pyramiding late fees.
Per your pamphlet, Important Notice Regarding Sams Club Discover Accounts, GE Money Bank, March states, The Late Payment Fee will be $0 for a New Balance of $29.00 or less.
Also, each of my billing statements reflected cash earned award of $2.01. What ever happened to my $2.01 cash award? This disappeared from my statements as of the 8/14/07 statement.
In regards to the finance charge of $2.60 on stmt date 6/14/07, your stmt shows an average daily balance of $166.82. My thoughts on this, this should have also been adjusted once the $29.00 late fee was refunded. This then would have resulted in my account having a -0- balance and not subject to interest charges, per you rules stipulated on the reverse side of this bill.
I also noticed you increased my annual percentage rate for purchases from 18.37% on my 6/14/07 stmt to 66.48% on my 7/14/07 statement. What prompted this increase in financing fees? I hope OTS also looks further into this matter.
To continue, the prompting factor, which caused you to eventually cease further attempts to collect this erroneous debt, resulted from my email to Sams Club. As my correspondence states, I cancelled active accounts with you. I then became concerned about my mother, dealing with you. Originally, we had obtained our Sams Club Membership together. After closing my accounts with you, I proceeded to ensure my mothers connection to your business needed cancelled. I went to Sams Club, did this, and set up a new membership just for me. When asked if I wanted to have a Sams Club Discover Card, I responding with a resounding NO. I then agreed to a regular Sams Credit Card and a line of credit. I became aware after returning home, this line of credit was also with GEMB. I responded back to Sams I would not do business with you and requested they again cancel this last line of credit, prompting a letter to me, dated Nov. 9, resulting in my account being corrected to a -0- balance.
In conclusion, I personally view your business practices comparable to those used by street thugs. Whereas, a street thug may threaten to do physical harm, if you do not do as they demand, GEMB, on the other hand, use harassment by continuous phone calls from collection companies and defamation of credit histories to credit reporting agencies to obtain money not owed. I am sadden the criminal code does not allow me to file attempted theft charges against you, but it should! However, fortunately, the civil court system and federal regulatory agencies do allow situation such as this to be addressed, which I most certainly plan to pursue each avenue. Moreover, once the OTS finalizes their involvement in this matter, I do plan to seek monetary damages through the civil court system.
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