Ok, Im warning everyone who's reading this in advance that is going to be a pretty long and complicated issue. I am thanking everyone in advance for any help. Heres the story. Back in April of 2000 Chase contacted me and offered me credit insurance for my account, so that if for some reason i got sick or lost my job and couldnt pay my bill then the insurance would take care of it. I had the service for a few months and called them in December of 2000 to cancel the service. Well, around that time I was pretty irresponsible with my account and I called in all my payments and disregarded any paper statements that came through the mail. Turned out that in 2002 I realized that they were still charging me for this insurance, so i called again to cancel. I figured it was resolved but then in Feb of 2003 the charges were still coming!!! Bad part about all this is that my credit limit was at $5000, and shortly after canceling the credit insurance my Chase credit card account was closed by the lender. The charges were still allowed to happen for whatever reason though. I got in contact with Chase and they referred me to some "American Bankers" which apparently backs up the credit insurance. The customer service lady has record of me cancelling the insurance policy on December 14, 2000 and couldnt figure out why it was still being charged. Finally, in April of 2003 they stopped charging me, and they requested that I write a letter to American Bankers to get refunded for all the monies charged to me for those 2+ years. I wrote them a letter and they responded saying that "because you enrolled for the credit insurance program, there is no basis for a refund." Nowhere on the letter does it make any mention of the original cancellation date, and only shows the final April 2003 cancel date. I called them to ask them about it and they said that they are investigating, but it sounds like im getting the runaround since it took them over 2 months to respond to my letter. What do you guys suggest I do? Chase isnt doing anything about it, which im not sure if they can in the first place. The charges for all this insurance totalled over $2000, not including the finance charges and "over limit" fees (since their charges were making my account go over the $5000 limit). This is a really crappy situation, and im stuck. Any ideas?
You could invoke the Fair Credit Billing Act against Chase and force them to get involved. By contacting them way back when I would be taking the position taht you invoked FCBA back in 2000 and all charges incurred since then area violation of FCBA which you are not obligated to pay.
Did you get the name of the person you spoke with at American Bankers (the one who acknowledged that you canceled in 2000)? If so, I'd write a letter stating that so and so validated that this should be canceled effective back to 2000. If you don't have her name, try calling again, making sure you get a name, and try to get them to admit to the same thing. Then use that as ammunition, dealing with them. If they don't cooperate, do as flyingifr suggests and get Chase involved under the FCBA. At that point, write a letter to Chase quoting the person from American Bankers. Tell them you want all of the payments refunded, plus interest, plus any fees incurred because of this (like overlimit fees). Then tell them that you'd like to have the account reinstated since they caused the problems by billing you incorrectly. If they don't respond, try Planet FeedBack. If they do reinstate the card, consider if you want to keep it. If not, cancel it, and make sure you request that they mark it "closed by consumer." Keep copies of the letter.
