Gather 'round, my friends, and I'll tell you a sad tale of Corporate America at it's sparkling best.
Pay close attention because you are the next victim.
Dropped my truck off to have it inspected. Turns out it required serious work that cost a lot of money. No choice but to whip out the credit card, but when I did the charge was rejected. I knew there was plenty of room on the card so I asked Super Mechanic to run it again. Rejected. This was January 26.
Fortunately I have been going to this guy for 26 years; he let me take the truck without paying him. After humbly apologizing, Carol and I went home to figure out what the hell happened.
Took a look at our last credit card statement, received in early January and it showed available credit of $2,632. This is Sears/Citicorp, by the way, in case you want to know who to hate. We called them. They told us our credit history had been reviewed, which they do periodically, and because of increased debt, our credit line had been reduced by $2,550. We told them we had never been notified, the phone clerk told us a letter had been sent out on 1/18. After stressing repeatedly that we never received it, we went on to argue the merits of the situation with her to no avail. Moved on to her manager and got the same results. They refused to do anything to help us even though we were not even aware of the reduction. We have no idea how the hell we are going to pay the goddamn bill.
Ironically, because we exist south of the poverty line, we have had to use the credit card more than we wanted to, just to survive. What are we going to do know? Our heating oil payments are charged to that card monthly. WERE charged to that card. And that is just one example.
Fascinatingly enough, we received the notification letter yesterday; January 27. The letter was dated 1/23, not 1/18, which immediately raised suspicions in my mind. On top of that, some of the factors cited for the decision are questionable, and Carol and I are going to investigate.
By the way I am proud to report that at the end of our phone conversation Thursday night, Carol completely lost it. She used the F word, the S word, and any other word she could think of to express our frustration. Although the policy is not the clerk's fault, it's good a Sears/Citicorp representative got to hear that. They deserved it.
We got off the phone and looked at each other and said what the hell are we going to do? We felt completely helpless and intensely furious at the same time. As of that moment, we no longer had credit of any kind and no savings. We are naked and vulnerable. And Sears/Citicorp could not care less.
Let me make an important point. We have never missed a payment on this card. Never made a late payment on this card. And we have a long history with them. They chopped our available credit because they think there is a possibility we might become delinquent, regardless of our payment history.
I am filing complaints with the Better Business Bureau, the Attorney General's office, and the Consumer Finance Agency. I don't expect to win, but I cannot in good conscience let these assheads off the hook without making them squirm.
The fine print in our contract might give them the right to do what they did, but when we called, they should have cut us some slack, given the situation. AND, on the day the limit was reduced we should have been called or a registered letter should have gone out that we had to sign for, so that we knew what was going on. The reduction should not have been active until we were notified.
This is the country we live in. It doesn't matter how hard you work and if you play by the rules, you will still be cut down by those in power. Why? Because they can.
There are millions in this country in the same boat and nobody on our side. And republican presidential candidates want to talk about abortion, gay marriage, don't ask don't tell, and religion. They toss around terms like job creators and job killers, and none of it means a goddamn thing. They don't know what we are going through, they don't care what we are going through. THEY DON'T CARE.
My mission in life is to bring down Sears/ Citicorp. We have to storm the castle, people. What these vipers do is not right, it is immoral, it is cold hearted and pointless. How much crap do we have to eat? How long can you squirm under the boot of greedy corporations until you rise up and fight back?
This is very serious stuff. You have no control. As difficult as your life is, a random act by a heartless corporation can make it worse.
Carol and I are going to fight back with everything we got. These scum are going to know we are around. They count on people rolling over.
They can go to hell. I am done rolling over.
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