Friday, January 25, 2008

Personal Investigation...

In October, someone ganked my credit card digits and tossed a cool $2,350 onto my account through a flower shop in NoHo. NoHo here is North Hollywood, as opposed to North of Houston Street in NYC...Houston in NYC = HOWSTUN...yeah, I don't get it either.

Well, I have no reservations in warning everyone about the poor banking practices of several American entities: CitiGroup, Bank of America, etc...I won't go into the Subprime meltdown and how we're all suffering from it, but bottom line, I got hammered by a thief and then hammered by Citi with a monster interest rate. When I reported the fraud, I was told I wouldn't have to make a payment until the matter was resolved, so as I wouldn't be paying for a stranger's wedding or funeral arrangement, teddy bears, or enough helium balloons to reach far corners of the universe. At that point, I was also told that I'd receive an affidavit that I would need to sign and return.

A couple weeks pass, no affidavit. Then I get a call: "'Why haven't you paid your bill?" I was irate. I explained to the girl what I was told, and she countered by reminding me that I already had "X" amount of legit charges on the card that I should be paying for anyway...and so I asked her to "re-explain" exactly what I was supposed to do. I got the same explanation and then realized... ...I'm done with Citi. Done. I told the unpleasant college student that I still hadn't received the affidavit in order to send back to the people at Citi that matter, and that I hadn't heard anything in regards to the investigation that had supposedly been launched..............

Eventually, everything was "taken care of." I ended up making payments on charges that someone else put on the card, as well as the interest rate hike that I received because they couldn't get the affidavit to me sooner. The money was credited back to my account and my interest rate went, well, from high to higher 22%. Seriously. Done with Citi.

The other day I called to speak to someone about closing my account, and decided to ask, "Hey, how's that investigation coming?" After hearing this "phone superior" inform me that chances are, they "looked into" the charges and when they couldn't get a quick answer they ate the cost, I asked to be connected to whoever had been assigned to my case. Yep. That was the deal.


So, here's what I'm thinkin'...


The people at the "flower shop," are none the wiser, and in truth, I think the flower shop is a front for some local Armenian Mafia - so I'm thinking I may give them a call, or drop by and say, "Where's my order? I ordered 2,350 bucks worth of stuff in October, and it didn't go to the proper place." I'd so like to know how all of this happened...and if I never go, I'll never know. Anyone wanna take a trip over to Blooming Flowers?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Submit this to consumerist.com and see if you get a better outcome. I have see many people use the site to get piss-poor service corrected.

nicholasjcoleman said...

I'll go. Want me to bust some knees?

Sheldon said...

I'm writing my loose script...I've got Nick down for knee busting, and DJ Spry down for taking the message to masses.

SIS said...

Hey Jamesy...don't have much to offer on "physical violence" but I know the # to 911...got some credit card fraud goin on here in the "show me state" as well...I just LOVE the way the Howell County Sheriff's Dept. "INVESTIGATES" It's been probably 6 months since I filed my report and haven't heard even a "peep" from them...hey maybe they don't want to prosecute their "good buddy"...oh well...think i'll give 'em a call today.