FNANB Credit Card account difficulties:

FNANB Credit Card account difficulties:

August 15, 2005

I received a call from Midland Credit Management in June 2005 and they said they had an account they purchased from FNANB for about $1,600.00. Since I have perfect credit (Credit Score about 700) I assured the caller that I had no such amount outstanding. It sounded like a scam so I offered nothing to her, however, she had my name (an unusual one), the credit card company (FNANB) my SS# and more. I asked if I could get a number and call her back, which I did and realized it was a legitimate call.

"Danyell" came up with a certain number which she said was owed as of the date the account "went into collections" in Novenber 2004. I told her I would research it and call her back. When I did this, I remembered that we had several credit cards stolen on March 5 (USA)/ 6 (Italy) when we arrived in Italy. A FNANB account had items charged on it that totaled the same amount they were seeking to recover HOWEVER I called all the credit card companies from Italy, including FNANB, and reported all the cards stolen. This was within a few hours of the theft (pickpocket on a train) yet the thieves still charged thousands of dollars on the cards. Every single credit card company was a pleasure to deal with EXCEPT FNANB. I sent them every scrap of documentation including police reports and affadavits I had prepared for the various creditors, Certified Mair Return Receipt. A few weeks later I received an unsettling letter from Fleet Credit Card services asking for documentation of the theft. I called and asked what they did with the items I had faxed and was informed that "FLEET" had purchased the FNANB accounts and they needed their own set of documents which I faxed to them.

The April 2004 statement showed the credits for the bogus Italy charges but the statement had the new account number not the account number the charges were made on...that account was closed out on 3-6-04, so there was never a statement issued on that account after March 2004. So, I provided all that I had to Midland (MCM) by fax and waited. I waited from 6-20-05 to 8-15-05 with no word.

I checked my credit score last week and found that the debt has been posted (in collections) to my Credit Report (noted as "in dispute") and when I saw that I nearly blew my stack. Under the "Fair Credit Reporting Act" I believe that a creditor has to make an attempt to confirm the debt and go through the dispute process if applicable. No contact was ever made before MCM called me and followed up with a letter on 6-20-05 offering to accept 50% of the debt as settlement.

OK, I know this is convoluted but stay with me; I called MCM today and was advised that they could not accept the credit card statement I sent them, showing reversal of the bogus charges, because the statement showed a different account number that that one that MCM had on record as the account underwhich the money was owed. I tried to explain that there was NEVER a statement on the stolen card for March (2004) because when the theft was reported an new account number was issues and all charges were transferred to the new account. To top it off, MCM said the account number they showed as owing the money was NOT the account number of the stolen card but a completely different number! How they managed that is beyond my comprehension but I can find absolutely NO RECORD OF EVER HAVING A CREDIT CARD WITH THE NUMBER THEY CLAIM THE MONEY WAS OWED ON.

The CSR at MCM told me that they have requested statements from FNANB (it's been almost 8 weeks) and that they still could not accept my documentation due to the mismatched account numbers. After we hung up I was able to locate a photocopy of all the credit cards that were stolen (yes I do copy everything, just in case) and had written the various card's information on the paper as I contacted each one from Italy. Thank God for AMEX who helped me place all those calls free of charge through their travellers assistance program. I faxed that sheet of paper along with the affadavits listing the last 4 digits of each account to MCM with a letter noting that the account number they claimed they purchased from a previous collection agency (Jefferson something...) was completely unknown to me. I called back a few times to see that they got the fax but could not get through their phone tree to a live person.

Please advise if I need to offer more information.

Regards,

B.

North Carolina Click this link to e-mail the message author: Email User