True story…
I’m one of those people who is obsessed with my credit score. I know it’s not cool, but it is super practical and I save a lot of money on my mortgage, insurance, etc. I subscribe to Experian to monitor my credit movement, know all the rules to achieve the best credit score (hint #1 by far is pay your loan payment on time, everytime) and overpay my mortgage. In short, I am a credit card company’s model citizen…
Then through an unusual series of twists and turns, I found out that my BMW World MasterCard credit card, with whom I had a zero balance for as long as I can remember, had a fraudulent charge come through and it was almost three months overdue. The amount was for a $91 automatic renewal for a service that I canceled six months earlier. I am paperless, so I don’t get a BMW World MasterCard statement in the mail and have never received one electronically.
This is where it gets weird. Despite the fact that the card is in my name and I get pummeled by email with ads for golf experiences, 1000 mile bonus points if I just do X, Y or Z, etcetera. My WIFE forwards an email she received that day addressed to Geoffrey Schmidt saying “We Want To Help You.”
We both searched her email to see if anything, at all, had come prior to this point referencing any payment due and the answer was…. negative. I performed the same exercise and again, negative, nothing, zilch, nada, zero.
I immediately called the number on the email (smudged in the image above, (along with my wife’s email address and account info) so they don’t get bombarded if this goes viral). They start asking questions like “how can we clear this? How much can we get from you today to help settle this matter, etc.” I tried to explain to them that I had not used the card in almost a year and always pay it off.
They didn’t really seem to care, they wanted some contribution toward the $91 open balance. I suddenly realized that this love affair I have with my near perfect credit score was not symbiotic with BMW World Mastercard (which appears to be affiliated with Elan Financial Services, a third party loan company that BMW Financial Services probably uses as their credit card issuing “bank”), but I digress… I provide the lenders with a super clean payment history, aggressively pay off my debt and they treat me like gold. Isn’t that how it is supposed to work?!?
“Given that we are talking about 107 bucks ($91 plus some related late charges = $107.29), I can clear it all,” I said. After paying the whole amount immediately they were about to hang up and I said, “hold on, we’re not done yet… “
I asked to speak to a supervisor and was connected with “Bee” (she wouldn’t give her last name) and proceeded to question the entire process. I knew that once this was paid in full, there was no “objections script” for what I was going to say next. How can:
- a fraudulent charge show up on my card,
- no notification was ever get sent to me about a balance due for almost three months,
- then one is finally send when the credit card company is at Defcon 1 with their ‘finger on the credit agency reporting button,’ over a $91 charge,
- and the ONLY email sent is one sent to my wife, who, although she is authorized to view the bill, is secondary on the account, yet all the stuff that BMW World Mastercard is pushing is sent to me???
She tacitly agreed with me (or at least didn’t disagree with me) but then said 99% of the time, the person just won’t pay, so they report. The only way to fix this is to write to another part of of Elan (I think), called their Consumer Recovery Department. Which I did:
About a month later, I received a letter from the CRB Dispute team denying to reverse the negative report. Then today, I received this from Cardmember Service:
Cardmember Service offered a number, and probably didn’t expect a complaint call after they said in the letter the provisional removal of the charge, post research, is now final. I spoke with Darlene (again no last name), who was nice enough until I said, Cardmember Service reported me as late on a charge that I did not make, and I have this letter that says they did the research and I don’t owe the money? After 30 minutes, she said “there was nothing more they could do.” I asked to speak to a supervisor and waited another 30 minutes, afterwhich time Darlene said “I misspoke, there is something – you need to speak to the fraud department.” I expressed my doubts about their Fraud department being able to reverse what the “only contactable by mail” Credit Reporting Dispute arm already denied, but I was an hour in already so had nothing to lose.
She transferred me to Anthony (no last name) in the Fraud department. Anthony appeared to have been briefed and also appeared to be the guy they send in to win the argument, because he was trying to find a word in the discussion that he could challenge and therefore make the whole issue invalid. That word was fraud. He said, the letter never mentions anything about Fraud, and truth be told, I said that it did.
One point for Anthony.
I then corrected myself and reference the fact that I was talking to the Fraud department at BMW MasterCard and/or Elan and/or Cardmember Service and that the implication was that it was a Fraud.
This word game went on several times and then I said, let me be very specific:
- March 31 the charge happened for $91.
- June 25 my wife (not me) got the one and only email related to an overdue balance. The same day, I paid the amount due and then contested the charge.
- August 2, my credit score went down
- August 2, I send a certified letter to “CRB Dispute” and asked to have the negative reporting removed
- Early September I received a letter from CRB Dispute saying that after researching the matter they are not going to remove the negative item.
- Today, I received a letter telling me the provisional removal is permanent (final), no money owed.
I then told, Anthony “I know it’s not you, its the machine you work for, but there was a mistake made and this has to have happened to thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people and this is a class action lawsuit waiting to happen, with real and measurable financial damages. The minute someone has to pay 0.25% more for their mortgage that additional cost amount which is easily measurable and provable by the bank letter the applicant receives becomes a liability to BMW WorldMastercard holders or former holders. Further refusing to remove the mistake moves it from actual damages to punitive, meaning that the credit card company can face a lot more than 1/4% x the mortgage balance of thousands of borrowers x 30 years in many cases. My next step is to hand this file to my attorney who will happy take this on, probably for free.”
Point, Set, Match…
Postscript…
At this moment he is working on getting the negative item removed. I am not hopeful, but since the damage has already been done to my credit score (it went from excellent to very good, so I am not going to go hungry, but others might), I don’t really have anything to lose by handing this over and letting him run with it.
I’ll report back and also do a segment later on my YouTube Channel: YouTube.com/HolySchmidt
