Archive for the ‘Credit Card Debt’ Category
Computers are used to keep track of everything from personnel records, to bank accounts, to loans and revolving credit. When computer glitches occur, they can create havoc in your life. Just ask Daniel DeVirgilio, an Ohio man who recently received a cable bill for $16.4 million. An engineer at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, he did the math and came to the conclusion that he would have to order 1.6 million on-demand movies or one pay-per-view fight 4,000 times in order to accumulate charges that high. Time Warner issued a statement saying they will work together with DeVirgilio to resolve the issue, but not every victim of such computer bugs is so lucky.
Take Patrice Perry, a client of our firm, for example, who received an even crazier bill from Capital One bank for $286,651,237 in 2009. After receiving repeated phone calls at work and at home by Capital One collectors, she retained counsel. Then she was sued and when she went to Court to defend herself, Capital One didn’t show up. Months of torment ensued, including phone calls to family members and co-workers and a refusal to cease harassing her. After being sued for debt harassment by our firm, Capital One released a statement blaming “human error” for the billing letter but they never commented about their harassing acts. Blaming a computer for sending a letter that also happened to increase the level of harassment was not the only thing happening here. For months, this consumer endured a living hell every time she picked up her phone or opened her mailbox, wondering what Capital One would try next.
Whether it’s a computer glitch or someone intentionally causing the computer to print a letter that was knowingly outrageous, companies will hide behind these excuses to justify the unfair practices they use with their customers. Have you received such a letter? What can you do if you receive a bill of much more than you could ever owe? Debt collectors must comply with the FDCPA even if the debt or the amount claimed is accurate or not. The Act was put in place to protect consumers by enforcing fair debt collection practices. If you or a loved one is experiencing harassment at the hands of a debt collector, contact an experienced attorney who will stop collection calls, end the harassment, and correct your bills once and for all.
In most cases, people who receive collection calls accrued the debt themselves and have fallen behind on their payments. In some instances, however, these charges are a result of identity theft. Because people rely on technology to pay bills and make banking transactions, it is important to stay protected against hackers and Internet fraud. The best way to avoid collection agency harassment is to reduce the risk of having your identity stolen in the first place.
Consumers who use debit cards should check their account activity frequently. Every major bank has an online banking option which makes it quick, convenient, and free to monitor checking accounts. Anyone who comes across questionable or suspicious transactions on their statement should contact the bank as soon as possible.
Credit cards are better protected against fraud. Therefore, they should be used for online shopping and other Internet transactions instead of debit cards. Information shared online runs the risk of being stolen by hackers and used without your knowledge or consent. Again, people who suspect their accounts have been used fraudulently should contact the credit card company immediately.
Collection calls only begin once payments have not been made for a significant amount of time. Regular credit checks are a surefire way to stop theft in its tracks. Some criminals can open new cards in the victim’s name; in some cases, the only way a person knows that this new account exists is by seeing it on their credit report. Credit scores are very sensitive to missed payments, and even a fraudulent card can have a negative impact on your score for a while.
It is important to understand why collection calls feel like harassment in order to deal with the stress they create.
Many Americans have fallen behind on their credit card, mortgage, and/or car payments because they have experienced some form of financial difficulty. This causes stress on the individual, as well as family and friends that are affected. To make matters worse, collection agencies are making harassing collection calls about past-due accounts on a daily basis. These agencies use fear tactics on vulnerable people for one purpose: to make money.
When a consumer falls behind on their payments, creditors often retain debt collectors or sell the debt to them for a fraction of the total debt. Now, it is up to the collection company to turn a profit for themselves by collecting as much money as possible. It is typical for these agencies to pitch a “deal” to settle for less than the original debt; in fact, they are still making a profit because they bought the debt for far less. This is when the debt harassment starts.
Debt collectors will often use threats and lie to the consumer to try to force a payment out of them. They will up the ante even further to squeeze as much money out of the person as they can. This causes added stress and anxiety on the consumer who is already overwhelmed by their finances in the first place. Even though some of the tactics they use are unethical, collections companies continue to use them for financial gain.
It is important for people in this situation to remember to stay calm. Many of the intimidation practices used by debt collectors calling the home or office are empty promises. If the threats feel like harassment then an experienced debt collection lawyer can help you learn your rights and stop the deception once and for all. Otherwise, taking positive steps to get out of debt is the best way to stop collection calls.
Unmanageable debt has become a way of life for a majority of Americans. Even as our government struggles to survive its own massive deficits, it is not surprising that we as individuals often have difficulty meeting our credit card payments, mortgages and car loans, especially when interest rates and bank fees are designed to keep consumers deep in debt. The fact is that our economy encourages people to live with too much debt, in ways that cannot be repaid in a lifetime. We are encouraged to buy more than we need and to pay for it later by use of credit cards, mortgages, student loans and car payments. Even with the best of intentions, unforeseen things can happen. Yet, we all need to survive and must provide for our families, even if it comes at the cost of not knowing how to pay for it until later. And so, money issues can get out of control, even more so when something unexpected happens. It can be the result of an historically bad economy, divorce, death or illness of a wage earner, or job loss. Debt increases throughout life and causes major stress.
If paying your bills has become difficult, your accounts have likely been sent to collections. Collection departments and debt collectors are the tools used by banks, mortgage companies, auto lenders and credit card companies. These same businesses that encouraged you to buy, to pay later, assault you with collection harassment demands to pay immediately, by any means necessary; and when people don’t pay immediately, that’s when things go from bad to worse. Collection departments and debt collectors specialize in pressuring you to pay and pay and pay, often resorting to harassment, threats, abuse, deception and occasionally filing lawsuits, until they get what they want. In far too many cases, the actual amounts being sought changes considerably, growing far greater than the amounts actually owed without any justification. In other cases, the debts are too old to be collected, but that does not stop the collection industry from pushing as hard as possible, knowing that good people want to pay their bills.
If you find yourself being called by a debt collector, the chances of you being the victim of collection agency harassment is far greater than you may think. Americans are contacted by debt collection agencies every year, in many cases several times a year. However, there are steps that one can take in order to stop the harassment, and to be certain they do not pay anything more than they actually owe. In many cases, people can drastically reduce and even eliminate the debt they have. A lot of debt claims can be defended, more often than you think.
One of the key points to getting out of debt and avoiding collection harassment is to manage your money effectively, but once you are already having trouble, you need help. Getting debt help starts with gaining knowledge on managing your income and expenses, keeping a tight rein on unnecessary spending and eliminating erratic behavior. It also means cutting back on offers of credit and not using cards that charge excessive interest and fees. The removal of debt harassment in your life, whether you are experiencing it for the first time or have been dealing with it for years, is achievable through calculated steps to keep your money and life in order.
A former JPMorgan Chase employee is suing the company for wrongful termination but more importantly she has filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC. The allegations charge JPMorgan with robo-signing, which is the automatic generation of documents such as foreclosure notices without a notary or following the legal process, among other illegal practices.
The former employee, Linda Almonte alleges the following:
1. Chase Bank sold to third party debt buyers hundreds of millions of dollars worth of credit card accounts. . .when in fact Chase Bank executives knew that many of those accounts had incorrect and overstated balances.
3. Chase Bank executives routinely destroyed information and communications from consumers rather than incorporate that information into the consumer’s credit card file, including bankruptcy notices, powers of attorney, notice of cancellation of auto-pay, proof of payments and letters from debt settlement companies.
4. Chase Bank executives mass-executed thousands of affidavits in support of Chase Banks collection efforts and those Chase Bank executives did not have personal knowledge of the facts set forth in the affidavits.
5. When senior Chase Bank executives were made aware of these systemic problems, senior Chase Bank executives — rather than remedy the problems — immediately fired the whistleblower and attempted to cover up these problems.
To support her claims, Almonte says she has “a large volume of documents in her possession available for review by the SEC” and offers her first-hand observations as well.
Almonte’s attorney issued the following statement:
“On numerous occasions, Ms. Almonte witnessed these Affidavit Signers work through at times 3-feet tall stacks of Judgment Affidavits at once during weekly multi-hour long, non-related company meetings. The notaries were not present at these meetings. The Affidavit Signers simply relied on hourly workers to reconcile amounts owed and then treated the actual execution of the affidavits as busy work to be performed while the Affidavit Signers could focus on other matters.”
Article Source:
Chase Hit With SEC Whistleblower Complaint Over Credit Card Practices
Debt collection harassment attorney Craig Kimmel and client Patrice Perry appeared on Fox News to discuss a case against Capital One. Capital One harassed Patrice over a credit card debt and sent her a bill for $286 million.
As featured on Fox News Channel:
The story surrounding Capital One’s $286 million demand letter is making headlines across the Country, everywhere from National Public Radio to The Consumerist to the UPI wire. Patrice Perry will make her first national television appearance, along with her attorney Craig Thor Kimmel, Friday morning at 6:45am Eastern on Fox & Friends, airing on Fox News Channel.
Related Discussion:
Holding Court With Izzy: Woman sues Capital One after getting $286 million credit card bill
A Delaware County woman claims that a malicious human being – and not a computer program – is behind the erroneous $286,651,237 credit-card bill that Capital One sent her last year, according to a lawsuit filed last week in Philadelphia court.
Now, Patrice Perry, 58, is suing Capital One for that same ridiculous amount for the months of harassment and “terroristic debt-collection methods” that she suffered at their hands, according to the suit.
Her attorney, Craig Kimmel, said that the nine-figure bill that Perry received in August was the final straw.
“It’s not that different from going up to someone’s house, knocking on the door and punching them in the face when they answer,” he said.
Perry’s troubles started in May 2009, when Capital One began trying to collect an alleged credit-card debt from her, according to the suit. The company not only called her at home and at work repeatedly, it also called her family and co-workers, the suit said.
Perry, a hotel clerk from Clifton Heights, received a series of bills, the first of which claimed that she owed $4,807, Kimmel said. The second bill, which came more than two months later, said, without explanation, that she owed about $100 less, according to the suit.
Kimmel said that his client never paid the first bill and was confused when the second one dropped in price. The third bill, received on Aug. 11, 2009, was $13 more than the first bill, again without explanation or a list of how the charges were calculated.
“It’s not your typical scenario, where you’d expect if they were pursing debt with interest it would only go up,” Kimmel said. “It went down and up and down and up. The only thing I can associate with that is that they were trying to confuse my client.”
If Perry was confused after the third bill, she was dumbstruck when the fourth arrived for $286,651,237. Capital One asked that payment be sent in an envelope included with the bill and threatened to pursue legal action if she didn’t pay.
“She was shocked, she had never seen a letter with such a big number on it before,” Kimmel said. “And to demand she put the money in the envelope included and send it back . . . Phew!”
Kimmel said that a bill that large would most likely have been flagged and that human beings, not computers, are behind it.
In a written statement, a Capital One spokeswoman doesn’t deny that claim.
“There are very rare occasions when human error has led to inaccuracies in customer billing letters,” the statement read, in part. “This is clearly one of those instances. . . . We are working to resolve this issue.”
Kimmel said that Capital One sued Perry for a lesser amount, but when no one from the company showed up for a hearing this spring, the case was dropped.
The last communication Perry received from Capital One was last week, when she got a letter that, without mentioning the last bill for more than $286 million, states that she now owes around $6,000, Perry said.
Article by:
STEPHANIE FARR
Philadelphia Daily News
farrs@phillynews.com, 215-854-4225
Original article here: What’s in her wallet? Well, not $286,651,237
Related Articles following this story:
Boston Herald
Courier Post Online
The Consumerist
JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s credit-card contracts will no longer require disputes to be settled through arbitration, a practice that lawmakers said was biased against cardholders, to help settle an antitrust lawsuit.
After a class action suit was filed by Philadelphia based law firm, Berger & Montague PC, the company stopped using arbitrators in July. Lenders including Bank of America, Citigroup Inc., Discover Financial Services and Capital One Financial Corp. secretly met or consulted for the purpose of requiring their cardholders to arbitrate all disputes.
Read the full story here:
JPMorgan Pulls Arbitration Clause From Card Contracts
Consumer credit laws are being created in many states that will force debt collection agencies to prove that the debt they purchased for pennies on the dollar exists and the consumer legitimately owes the money. North Carolina recently passed a law this month that requires debt buyers who file a lawsuit to provide documentation proving that they own the debt. In Indiana, there is the Indiana Deceptive Consumer Sales Act prohibits debt collectors from intentionally overstating the amount of the debt they are trying to recover.
National consumer credit laws such as the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act already prohibit collection agencies from harassing, deceptive or unfair practices such as telling neighbors or relatives about what is owed, or calling before 8 a.m. or late at night.
Since the recession started, at least a half-dozen states have adopted additional limits, like imposing statutes of limitations on collections and adding opportunities to punish abusive practices in court. Other states may soon follow suit.
Read the full story here: States adding limits, forcing agencies to prove debt exists.
