$$ A Strange Yet Happy Rant $$

I am amazed at the ineptitude of GE Retail Bank. They hold my "CareCredit" medical charge card.

I needed extensive dental work done, and a year ago August my dentist gave me a summery of the procedures I needed and costs, upfront. It came to a little over $3,000. I okayed their proposal and the assistant charged my card for the entire amount up front, which was required for their discounted offer. It was a good deal, in my opinion, so I went for it.

Now, CareCredit offers "no interest" for the first 12 months. But, if you don't pay the balance off in time, they charge around 20% interest on the original amount. So after paying the required minimum monthly payment, at the end of 12 months, I did a balance transfer to my Chase card, that also offers 12 months of no interest on balance transfers.

I did this transfer transaction about 3 weeks before the deadline, so as to be sure to avoid any interest charges. Then I waited and waited for my payment to post. Now, my expiration date with GE CareCredit was the 15th, and I grew more and more anxious as my payment continually refused to post. I made several phone calls to GE, and the first few operators couldn't find the transfer, so I called Chase. Chase assured me the transfer had gone through.

I kept calling GE, and the operators now were telling me that I needed to wait for the next billing cycle to see my payment posted. So, I waited, and waited. Finally the 15th rolled around and sure enough, GE never posted the payment, added a late payment fee and about $700 in interest charges to my statement!

I called them, I wrote them, sending all kinds of documentation, and refused to pay them anything. Finally, I see my balance transfer posted in November. The initial charges were cleared, but the fines and fees were still on my statement. I called them again, and again, until I finally saw my balance drop to zero! YEAH!

Then, on November 15th, I get a bill, both in the mail and in my email inbox, but this bill has a negative balance of -$900.00 plus change. So, I call them again, asking what is this negative balance. The operator looks up my account, and finally she apologizes, telling me that there has been a mistake and that I see should see the balance "zero out" in my December statement. Doesn't happen.

So, December rolls around, and I keep checking my online statement, and it still has the negative balance. So, I call them again, and again. They apologize and assure me the balance will zero out soon. A couple of days ago, I checked gain and it did just that! Thank god, right? Balance ZERO!

Then today, I get a check in the mail from them for over $900.00!!!!?????

I quadruple checked all my past statements from CareCredit and Chase. The balance transfer was paid in the correct amount, the fees and fines were removed from my CareCredit statements. I can't figure out where this $900 comes from!

I'm convinced! It's a December 21, 2012 miracle! I'm cashing it!

and then people wonder why banks fail and financial institutes implode.

they have no clue where or to money goes or comes from. they can't even coordinate a simple bank transfer.

anybody with some computer hacker sense working in a bank, like richard pryor in superman 3, could make himself a billionaire and no one would even know.

or you could say it's done on purpose, like crack dealers do, by making their stash house so unorganized and chaotic, that's it takes a monumental effort to find anything illegal.

reply to post by randomname


I know huh? At first I thought to put this in some conspiracy forum. It's like these banks can't keep track their underhanded dealings.

Originally posted by windword
I'm convinced! It's a December 21, 2012 miracle! I'm cashing it!

Go ahead, but save the money. They'll figure it out eventually and want that money back.

Seriously. be prepared to pay it back.

Banks ALWAYS get their money one way or another.
You will eventually get a bill for $900, they will also have proof in the form of a check for 900 that was cashed.
An accounting error on their part and now you are the bad guy.
I will say it is the OP's fault for dealing with any bank.
You dance with the devil and all.


To everyone else, dump your bank and see how much of your fiats are saved!
They can't survive without us, but we can thrive without them.

reply to post by schuyler



Yes, you're right. I must keep that in mind. How long do you think they have, legally, to take back their money?

These people did some very strange things with my daughter's student loan account too. They just went into her bank account and took something like 3 months worth of payments, in advance, from her checking, causing her all kinds of grief. Thing is, it happened just after the Obama student loan forgiveness thingy went into effect.

She had to get a lawyer to straighten things out with GE and the new "Obama Law" (sorry I can't cite it), which she had applied for. Turned out GE had the legal right to turn down her new student loan forgiveness law request. But, because of their careless thievery of her bank account, they acquiesced, and granted her loan to be turned over to the new "whatever" forgiveness law procedure.

reply to post by windword


Whoa there. What you've described so far is worth at least that amount in stress and anxiety. If I were you, I'd prepare a bill for psychological damages, with a detailed listing of each difficulty you've encountered, complete with your actions and expenses in trying to get it resolved. I wouldn't send it quite yet,but if you know a friendly lawyer, I'd look into it. In the meantime, happy for you that this worked out.

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by schuyler

 

Yes, you're right. I must keep that in mind. How long do you think they have, legally, to take back their money?

I doubt there is a legal limit, but there might be an "effective" limit, and that is that they get past their auditing period and a tax year. Once that happens, you might be home free, but I wouldn't consider it a done deal until a year had passed. After that a bank would be loathe to open up a can of worms they had previously put into archives.

Not to give you false hope, but i've had a number of situations where I wound up ahead. Right now in my checking I have several hundred dollars of transactions that have not cleared, all from merchants, that have happened over several years. I don't know if they actually got their money or not, but they never appeared on my statement. I suppose morally I ought to go after them, but they are for small amounts and you just know i would give them more hassle than it's worth to fix the issues. Spending $50 of someone's time to fix a $20 purchase doesn't make a lot of sense.

One other time I did a real estate transaction where we split the proceedings. I was supposed to get half of about $16K, but they gave me a check for the whole thing. Turns out they also gave a check to the other party for their half. I felt I;d better straighten this out, since that amount of money people have been killed over, so I went back to them and they said they had already reconciled and they would never have looked into it. Now I'm not sure I believe that, and I went through a period of, "Oh, damn!" but the fact is it wasn't really my money and I knew it, so I made it right.

reply to post by aboutface


there's nothing illegal about cashing a check made out to you.

every time they call to collect it, tell them you have no record of cashing it and put them on hold.

Originally posted by randomname
reply to post by aboutface

 

there's nothing illegal about cashing a check made out to you.

every time they call to collect it, tell them you have no record of cashing it and put them on hold.

Actually, it is illegal. It's not as if this is the first time this has happened. It is well-established in case law. And if your signature is on the back of the check, and you KNEW it was a mistake, then that constitutes fraud. I don't think a bank would go so far as to prosecute; they'd just settle for restitution and call it even, but the background is there, if necessary.

Putting the bank on hold may sound like a whimisical and clever way to hold them off, but it would simply add to the deceit and ratchet the bank to the next level. You don;t think "puttingt them on hold" would actually make them go away, do you? It would be worse than pligging your ears and saying, "I can't hear you." It would be like throwing gasoline on a fire, not a particularly intelligent thing to do.

reply to post by schuyler


You know, the more I think about it, I think that this check is a trap to make me re-open my account. There is a note on the back of the check. It says, in all caps:

WE HAVE RECEIVED NOTIFICATION OF YOUR REQUEST FOR A CREDIT BALANCE REFUND. WE ARE HAPPY TO FULFILL YOUR REQUEST. THIS IS A PROVISIONAL CREDIT. IF FURTHER INQUIRY FINDS YOU DID NOT HAVE A VALID CREDIT BALANCE, YOU ACCOUNT WILL BE REDEBITED.

I never made a request for a refund. I continually told them that the credit was a mistake! Maybe I'll wait, like a year and a half to deposit it, just to screw with their heads (There's no "must be cashed by" memo on the check). Or, maybe I should put it an interest bearing account until they ask for it back.

reply to post by schuyler


how would you know if it's a mistake. it's made out to your name, it's from your bank. why assume something negative.

maybe it's the banks way of apologizing and not admit anything that they could be held liable for.