Unauthorized Wihdrawal
Complaint
Chris
Country: United States
I have a credit card with new egg called the "bill me later" card or "preferred customer" card. the promotion they offered with this card was 6 mo's no interest no payments. the first payment was due in june.
Back in March they withdrew 2097.00 from my checking account. When they did this, I called them and said I never authorized this charge, and they reversed the charge a week later. within that week I was charged almost 300.00 for a few overdraft fees because that unauthorized charge put my account in the red. I had a few automatic payments set up and they withdrew.
After calling them and telling them about the fees, they said they'd have a manager call me back. A week later, and after several calls back they said to be patient and that someone would get in touch. After this week of waiting, they happened to charge me again for the full amount of my balance, 2097.00. At this point I called my bank back and had them put a block on the company. At that point I racked up a total of almost 500.00 in overdraft fees, along with the 2097.00 they took, and did NOT refund this time.
After talking with my bank for a few hours, someone said they understood and agreed with me that what they did was illegal and sent them a fax saying they needed to refund the orig amount along with the bank fees. After almost a month of repeated calling, and getting NO ONE to cooperate with me or call me back I finally decided to try an ATM dispute with my bank until I got it situated as I needed to pay rent and bills and was almost kicked out of my place because of this charge.
Well, here I am and its now June. No refund what so ever from this place and I just got done talking with them and was told for about the hundreth time, SOMEONE would call me back. i doubt they will.
Does anyone know what I can do about this? How do I even go about filing a law suit against a credit card company? would it be possible to get damages if i get kicked out of my place and because my credit score is now almost 100 points lower than it was because of other things I haven't been able to pay like my cell phone and power company now that im close to 3k in debt over this?
Back in March they withdrew 2097.00 from my checking account. When they did this, I called them and said I never authorized this charge, and they reversed the charge a week later. within that week I was charged almost 300.00 for a few overdraft fees because that unauthorized charge put my account in the red. I had a few automatic payments set up and they withdrew.
After calling them and telling them about the fees, they said they'd have a manager call me back. A week later, and after several calls back they said to be patient and that someone would get in touch. After this week of waiting, they happened to charge me again for the full amount of my balance, 2097.00. At this point I called my bank back and had them put a block on the company. At that point I racked up a total of almost 500.00 in overdraft fees, along with the 2097.00 they took, and did NOT refund this time.
After talking with my bank for a few hours, someone said they understood and agreed with me that what they did was illegal and sent them a fax saying they needed to refund the orig amount along with the bank fees. After almost a month of repeated calling, and getting NO ONE to cooperate with me or call me back I finally decided to try an ATM dispute with my bank until I got it situated as I needed to pay rent and bills and was almost kicked out of my place because of this charge.
Well, here I am and its now June. No refund what so ever from this place and I just got done talking with them and was told for about the hundreth time, SOMEONE would call me back. i doubt they will.
Does anyone know what I can do about this? How do I even go about filing a law suit against a credit card company? would it be possible to get damages if i get kicked out of my place and because my credit score is now almost 100 points lower than it was because of other things I haven't been able to pay like my cell phone and power company now that im close to 3k in debt over this?
Comments
In theory, if you have unauthorized charges to your checking account, you dispute it IN WRITING, within 60 days of the statement date showing the disputed charges, and your bank is supposed to investigate and possibly reverse the debit under FRB Reg. E.
In theory, if you have an unauthorized charge, or a billing error with a credit account, you dispute it IN WRITING, within 60 days of the statement date showing the disputed charges, and your credit card company is supposed to investigate and correct the error under FCBA.
The problem is what happens with overdraft fees resulting from the error, which if your bank won't reverse them you presumably want to collect as damages from "bill me later". If they won't just pay you, you then have to consider suing, and even though $500 (or even $3000) is a lot to you, it isn't a lot to an attorney. That leaves small claims court, and you will have to check your contract to see if you have that avenue to recover your damages, or if they insulated themselves from this liability through an arbitration clause.
Check your contract with "bill me later", and see what it says. They might cover arbitration costs, or cover them if you win.
That is why you should never have authorized automatic charges in the first place, since it opens you up to this financial vulnerability, where they might return your money after they make a mistake, but not pay the damages that result. If you never authorized them to bypass your controls in the first place, you are on firmer ground to hold them responsible.
At this point, they have charged you twice for the same amount. The second one is clearly unauthorized. Your bank sees this, in which case they should respond to your WRITTEN dispute of the overcharge by reversing it if you dispute timely. You have no basis for invoking your federal Reg. E dispute rights if you don't file a TIMELY WRITTEN DISPUTE with your bank.
If your bank doesn't reverse the second charge (the overdraft fees are a separate matter), it is time to go balistic through any channel that may work. Keep in mind that your bank may not want to do business with you after this, so you would be wise to have an alternate account with another bank.
1) Contact your local District Attorney and yoru state AG to report the fraudulent second charge by "bill me later".
2) Contact OCC to file a complaint against your bank for failure to investigate and reverse the second charge under Reg. E.
3) File a BBB complaint against "bill me later".
One of these may shake loose the unauthorized payments, and might possibly get reimbursement for your overdraft damages. In any case, you would want to take these actions even if you are filing in small claims court, since they may be more likely to produce a quick result.
In the mean time, you are out a hunk of cash. In the future, do not open credit accounts arbitrarily or allow automatic access to your checking accounts.
I just recently filed a complaint with BB, and the NEXT day someone from new egg happened to call me concerning the complaint lol.
Of course she was away from her desk when I called her back, but I have a feeling they may actually listen to me this time.
Also the only reason why I gave them my checking number in the first place was because they needed a bank account in order for me to get the promotion they had of no payments for 6 mos with no interest. I knew I should have just waited and not even gotten the card, but they make everything sound really easy..
Thanks again for the helpful response, I will check the contract out and see what they will cover in case I really do have to take these #@$%$# to court