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Howard's Views |
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by Howard E. Morseburg |
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SUCKERING PEOPLE INTO DEBT! HOW IT HAPPENS. |
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Amalia Gets Sucker-punched by AOL/Time Warner and FleetBoston Bank! HOW IT TOOK SIX
MONTHS TO RESOLVE A PHONY $23.90 CHARGE BY AOL! |
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Amalia is a hard working woman. Her shifts are eight hours a day, while all bundled up, because she works in a refrigerated unit in a warehouse packing seafood salads. Here in California this has to be a form of torture, spending eight hours a day in a cold refridgerated room, and then coming out into the heat of day when she's finished. I won't tell you how much she makes per hour, but you've probably guessed that it is not much above a minimum wage. For years she was a single mother taking care of two children, and supplemented her earnings by cleaning homes, scrubbing commercial stoves and ovens in restaurants at night, managing the building where she lives, and several other odd jobs in order to support her family. She is frugal, saves her money, zealously protects her credit, and never runs up her single credit card to more than she can pay at the end of the month, unless it is for a medical emergency. That was the way most Americans were taught to manage their finances before the 1980's! It was also before the predatory lending practices of the credit card industry came along, literally enslaving millions of Americans, by enticing them into and then burying them deep in debt. This was intentional, a well-planned assault upon the ingrained habit of saving in order to plunder the earnings of all Americans, indeed, every country on every continent. FLEETBOSTON/AOL AND INTEGRITY, HA HA HA! Amalia's single credit card is with OFleet FleetBoston, a large Boston-based conglomerate. She does not understand how she ended up with FleetBoston, but about twenty years ago she applied for her one and only credit card, and received ot through her local bank. Subsequently the bank was taken over by another, and the card was transferred to the new bank. That bank too was sold, again she was issued a different card, and sold again, and suddenly she began receiving statements from OFleet. Who knows how these things happen, or why? Amalia had not used her credit card for months when she received a statement in September 2001 from OFleet, with a strange charge of $23.90. She does not allow anyone else to use her card, so she called the number on her bill and went through a lengthy process involved in a phone tree to live operator process, protested the charge and asked that it be removed from her account. Usually they will remove a disputed charge until the matter is resolved, but OFleets "customer care" rep refused to do that, and told Amalia that it was an AOL charge, that therefore she must contact AOL and dispute it. "Who's this AOL?" asked Amalia. "I don't know any AOL. Take off the charge." They told her that AOL was her Internet Service for her computer, so she then informed them she did not have a computer nor use an Internet Service. She knows nothing about computers. Therefore, she didn't pay the bill. The following month OFleet added a $35.00 late fee to the original $23.90 charge. Wow, now a disputed bill was up to $58.90! That hurt. That's penalizing her almost a day's pay and the matter wasn't settled yet. She was shocked and indignant that anyone could do this to her. |
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HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE
BEEN FLEECED OUT OF HARD-EARNED $$$ BY OFLEET/AOL IN THIS
FASHION?
DISPUTED $23.90, LIKE AN ATOMIC BOMB,
MUSHROOMS TO $172.33 Do dogs have fleas? The following month her bill had another $35.00 late charge, plus interest. Then the month after that there was another late charge for not paying a late charge on time. Each month they added additional late charges, and the threat, "You pay, or we'll put it on your credit report!" By the time Amalia talked to me about it, even though she had paid the original bill for AOL and canceled the card with OFleet, her January 2002 bill was up to $172.33, all over a disputed $23.90 charge! Shortly after that she received a letter from OFleet telling her that they had canceled her card, and they had turned it over for collection. A letter came from a collection agency next, with further threats. Now it was a good part of her week's pay that they were demanding. No one would accept her story. What had been a $23.90 disputed charge was now becoming a nightmare! Twice she had already taken time off from work to go home and telephone them, costing her lost wages. How does someone unfamiliar with our credit system get through today's maze of phone trees, inhospitable personnel, and uncaring collection agencies? The abuses, especially of immigrants, people whose English or technical knowledge is not sufficient, and lower income people, are beyond comprehension. And all the time, the constant threat that it would ruin her credit, they she would be reported to the Credit Reporting Agencies. That's how they enforce it, through fear. HOW MANY PEOPLE HAS OFLEET
(FleetBoston) SCREWED LIKE THIS? |
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In the meantime, the clock was running for Amalia with AOL Online as well. On January 29, 2002 she received a letter from the AOL Billing Department, claiming that she owed them $95.60 as well. Her disputed $23.90 bill was now almost $300.00, and she has absolutely nothing to show for it. Her bill was in nether world, for something intangible. If this were an isolated instance, it might be forgiveable, but as anyone can plainly see, with AOL it must be endemic. Computer geeks are more often than not, arrogant, and they show a disdain for those who are not on their level in this new and fascinating, yet confusing world. That arrogance is too prevalent, like a person who has studied Greek or Latin feeling superior to those who have little or no comprehension of it. When this situation was brought to my attention, I immediately thought about her two children, how hard she had always worked to support them and here here's little wonder-boy and billionaire Stevie's AOL Online bilking her? So, I questioned Oscar, who is 14 and living at home. Oscar knows better, and he would never charge anything on his mother's card. Or, would he? No, not knowingly. Someone had given Oscar a CD with "500 FREE Hours" on it, and when his sister was home from college, she had brought her Laptop with her and allowed him to use it. I guess when you put it in the computer, it asks for a credit card number and his sister put in her mother's card number. After all, she was leaving in a few weeks, and he had 500 FREE hours, so there would be no charges on the card. Right? Wrong assumption. The guys at AOL Online are not dumb, they've hooked another sucker with that supposedly "500 Free Hours" story. Most likely it says in fine print that if you do not cancel, they automatically continue to charge you. Oscar was only 14 years old, so what did he know about how big business might throw a sucker-punch that could harm his mother? Fourteen, fifteen and sixteen year olds are unsophisticated, and it's obvious that thousands of them have fallen into this "FREE" trap, or rather "FREE" claptrap. And, what does Amalia, working every day in a refridgerator know about computers or about AOL? There are thousands more like her too, trapped in a maze that begins with confusing phone trees, regulations, contracts in small print, and people trained to collect...no matter what the problem. The hundreds of millions that the founder made? Much of it was due to the millions os CDs they left at Post Offices throughout the country or sent through the mail, a con-game that defrauded millions of Americans.. From her Sept. statement for $23.90 until today, she's now almost $300.00 in debt and hasn't one thing to show for it. Trying to get a mistake corrected by Fleet/Boston Bank is nearly impossible for the average person; they have neither the skills to cope with people trained in the art of screwing the public, nor the fortitude. It was a swindle worked in collusion with AOL, most likely, because it was impossible for either one of them not to be aware of the number of complaints, nor exactly what was going on. AOL put millions of those sucker offers in Post Offices around the country, a harmless looking CD. Hiow many people did they sucker into debt, shaft of their hard-earned money? How many? YES, MANY OTHER LOW INCOME PEOPLE HAS AOL SCREWED LIKE THIS; IT WAS SUCKER BAITING IN THE FULLEST SENSE OF THE WORD, LIKE THE OLD CON GAMES AT THE COUNTY FAIR.. FleetBoston Financial Corp. Bilked for $130
Million!
Four small-time pip-squeaks
went big-time and are now charged with scamming a number of huge
banking institutions, over a two year period, for almost a billion
dollars. Among the once screwed were the Armani-suited astute financial
wizards at FleetBoston. These wizards only lost $130 million of that
amount, though! Wow. Imagine losing $130 million to a few minor crooks
working out what was virtually a broom closet? It would make a fine
comedy for the film industry, providing they would come up with some
decent writers today.
Obviously they know how to shaft millions of the little people for $23.90 or $29.00 each month, but when it comes to handling the millions they take in, they haven't got a clue. They ought to resign en-masse, from the CEO on down, and put a few people who understand basic arithmetic in their places; if they won't resign, then fire them, get rid of the yokels. For that the suspected crooks face up to five years in jail. I'd say for not doing due diligence that they ought to be joined in jail by the OFLEET people who loaned them the money. That's almost as criminal an act for dereliction of duty as the crime itself. Unbelievable! How were the perpretrators caught? Simple. A J.P. Morgan genius visited them and found a door with a peep-hole, and inside a guy using a ten dollar shredder to destroy documents. (He'd obviously read the Enron Chronicles and learned something from them.) If it had been a hundred dollar shredder, the visitor from J.P. Morgan might not have noticed a thing wrong; they're used to a little more luxury than that in million dollar offices, so he had a brain-storm; something was wrong. He checked the label and it was from a Staples sales special, most likely. You can fool all of the executives some of the time, and some of the executives all of the time, but not all of these smart bankers all of the time. Or so they claim. Duh? Well, that won't bother OFleet too much. they know that $130 million is only a 4 1/2 million late-fee charges to the lower income or high-risk accounts that they carry on their books! If they just don't open the arriving mail for two days a few times a month, they can have raise that $130 million in short order! Not that this would cross their minds, delaying the payments, of course. Whoops, sorry, I forgot. Wasn't that Lesson # 1, they once taught Bankers going into the credit card business: "Lose or Delay Opening the Mail to Increase Profits Dramatically?" Click here to send this web site to a friend. JAMES Like Afghanistan's
Minefields, Today, Financial Minefields Are
Everywhere!
Instead of blowing off arms and legs, for years the Credit Card Cartel has been shattering people's financial lives, deliberately damaging their credit ratings, causing serious problems with the banking relationship, but more important, entering their homes and destroying their peace of mind. They invade the home and family privacy, like thieves entering through an open window in the night. The signs of it are everywhere, but one has to stop and think about it, to interpret what they read in the financial news, and put the pieces of the puzzle together. Financial writers must be living in a dream world if they cannot see it, and if they don't sound the alarm. The wonderful world that we were promised by Visa and MasterCard in their early days simply doesn't exist. The features they stressed, safety from forged checks, safety from armed robbery if you carried cash on your person, detailed statements for business expense purposes, reliability, quick access to cash, travel worry-free, are all figments of an active imagination in Visa or MasterCard's public relations departments. The sole mission of these corporations is to milk, milk, milk (and also to, bilk, bilk, bilk) the consumers, the public. The truth is that the multiplicity of credit cards and the ease with which they are obtained opens more doors to opportunists and crooks. The credit card safety promised us was nothing more than a lure and a pipe dream. Every year there are thousands of new Oscars and Amalias out there, just ripe for the plucking. The latest CD I received in the mail from AOL stresses the FREE hours, but this one says in large letters across the front: NO CREDIT CARD REQUIRED. The most obvious reason for this change in policy is probably...that AOL/Time Warner has had so many complaints and charge-backs that they finally got the message! If the truth were known we would probably find that my estimates are way too low, and that scores of thousands of people have been victimized in a manner similar to Amalia's case. After taking over from Amalia, I wrote to the head office of OFleet and outlined the problem. I received a courteous letter back from the Assistant to the President of the Credit Card Division, and they took off all the late charges and interest, but did not refund the original $23.60 she paid out. They admitted that they had notified all three major credit reporting agencies! They said that they would rescind it, but it would take approximately three months before it was completed. Can you imagine deliberately ruining a person's credit over a $23.60 disputed bill? If there is a truth to be made out of Amalia's
problem, it is this: credit card accounting and credit card
problems are too complex for many families today, and resolving them is
far too onerous and time consuming. Each additional credit card in your wallet increases the
risk of fraud, scams, unauthorized charges, and identity theft.
Different cards usually have different closing dates,
increasing the chance of making late payments and incurring $29 to $35
late fees.
Credit reports are literally worthless because of tens of
thousands of cases like Amalia v. OFleet. |
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ANOTHER STORY, AN 81 YEAR OLD WOMAN AND AOL As if that isn't enough, just recently my cousin lost her husband, so I called her to offer my condolences. During our long the conversation and knowing how I'd often written articles about the credit card business, she told me how much trouble she'd been having trying to straighten out an AOL billing for Online Service during her husband's final illness. First of all, they did not own a computer, but Qwest Communications, her telephone company, refused to take the charges off her bill. Why wouldn't they do so? She didn't authorize it in the first place, but they insisted she, herself, must deal with AOL. Elderly, and unaware of what she faced, she had to call, and deal with more automated voices, Telephone Trees, and waste a lot of time listening to garbage, dialing endless numbers, more hassles from supposed customer service representatives, all over a stupid $23.90 bill she did not owe, while worrying about a husband who was near death in the hospital. Not only that, but she faced a continuing charge of $23.90 each and every month by Qwest. My cousin is 81 years old and they have never owned a computer! How can Steve Casey, head honcho of AOL explain things like this? Are they buying mailing lists and then just adding charges to peoples bills? I'm suspicious. It makes me wonder how Steve Casey's firm really made all that money so quickly that they could suddenly buy up Time, Inc. How many other elderly people are being scammed by Qwest and AOL? Doesn't it make you wonder. YAHOO SMALL BUSINESS CHARGES - TRYING TO GET RID OF
THEM. |
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THE DEAD CAT & DEAD CAT LAWYERS The world is full of Dead Cats. They’re all about us, as gruesome as the thought might be, Dead Cats, and we’re paying a price for them each and every day, however ignoble this might seem. But, there are also Dead Cat Lawyers, and this I’ll explain a bit later as they're a specific breed in themselves. These thoughts came to mind as I read an article in the L.A.Times., by columnist Steve Lopez, about Sarah Harper and her cat Pete, and the Insurance Policy she purchased for Veterinary care for her tabby. A payment of $16.95 a month was an automatic deduction from her credit card account, but an unforseen problem came up when Pete died, and she noticed that she was now paying monthly for a policy for a Dead Cat. It’s an easy visual picture, simply a Dead Cat. Sarah’s not dumb, and $16.95 can be used to pay other bills, so she probably called the credit card company first and asked them to stop taking the deductions. The credit card company, owing allegiance to the bigger accound, told her she must call up the Insurance company, so she did and told them that Pete, the cat, is Dead. Cancel the insurance and stop taking $16.95 a month from me. “Nope,” said the person at the Insurance office, “read over your policy. You’ll find in the small print that you pay until the year is up; you signed a contract to pay $16.95 for a full year. WE do not cancel contracts whether Pete (the cat) is dead or alive.” “This is ridiculous,” claimed Sarah, but she got nowhere and therefore she must continue to pay insurance for Pete, now known as the Dead Cat. Lopez, the L.A. Times writer, is a sleuth (although a mighty Liberal one) and he looked into it and found lots of complaints from people paying for Dead Dogs and Dead Cats. He has started a Dead Dog and Dead Cat Liberation Movement (DD-DC-LM) to free people from such subversive onerous capitalistic contracts (schemes). And this, Dear Readers, is exactly the state most of us are in who carry plastic, either credit or charge cards, in our wallets. They put us in the same position as Sarah and Pete (the Dead Cat). We end up paying each and every month much more than Sarah’s paltry $16.95 for things we no longer have, to heartless outfits like Citibank, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, the Dead Cats that the financial world has put in our freezers. Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express and all the others who issue charge or credit cards, and the banks that they work with, are all part of this Dead Cat Conspiracy (DDC), and every month they’re exactly like Banfield (a Pet Hospital Group that issued Sarah's policy) in-as-much as they’re going to keep charging you, even when poor Pete, the Dead Cat is long gone. Just like Sarah found out, there are clawses* in that fine print that give them the power to do so. These clever contracts are written by Dead Cat Lawyers, so that’s why I call it The Dead Cat Claws (oh yes, SP, clause). Dead Cat Lawyers who work for Citibank, for Wells Fargo for Union Bank, and for all the rest, cleverly insert in fine print a number of Dead Cat Clawses in every contract. Sign up with AOL, or with anyone else where you give them the right to deduct monthly payments, and then try to get out of it. You cannot. That’s when they invoke the Dead Cat Claws. It seems that you’re stuck for life and have no further rights. The banks that issue the plastic work closely with these large companies and even though you supposedly control your card, if you read it carefully you'll find The Dead Cat Clawses. As far as they’re concerned, you’re Road Kill. Pete, however, died a more tranquil death, Bless his wonderful Cat Soul. He's up there in Cat Heaven purring away, unconcerned about Sarah fighting the Dead Cat claws here on earth. Much of today’s debt is for things that have long since lost their value, things that probably weren’t necessary in the first place. Those mounting debts, those monthly interest charges, and late fees are all the work of the Credit Card Cartel, with those Dead Cat lawyers ever at their beck and call to keep you entrapped. The next time you take your wallet out of your pocket to pay for your groceries, don’t pull out the plastic but pay with cash. Just think of Sarah’s Dead Cat, the Dead Cat Lawyers and the Dead Cat Claws. Howard E. Morseburg (copyright 2008) #600 1-16-08 Click here to send this web site to a friend. JA Copyright © 2006 Howard's Views. All Rights Reserved.
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| index.html | ||||||||||||
| Citibank & Fraud | ||||||||||||
| Triangle of Deceit | ||||||||||||
| Giant Fraud -Plastic | ||||||||||||
| Economic Slavery | ||||||||||||
| Greed of Wealthy | ||||||||||||
| IRS and Air Miles | ||||||||||||
| Amalia Cheated | ||||||||||||
| Air Mile Fraud | ||||||||||||
| Financial Grave Dig. | ||||||||||||
| Letters to CEO | ||||||||||||
| Reaming Consumers | ||||||||||||
| Co-conspirators | ||||||||||||
| Howard's Views P.O. Box 320 Solvang, California 93464 United States
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