Sears Fiasco
I have a problem and I’d like to warn everyone about a strange situation with a popular retailer. I went to a store a few years ago to purchase some appliances at Sears store in Toronto. In order to take advantage of their deferred payment plan, I had to apply for a store credit card. Easy enough; I purchased the appliances, and six months later paid the full amount. Since I did not need the card, I cancelled it. Fast forward to last year when a loan I applied for was declined because the store reported my credit erroneously. It has cost me over $ 1800.00 CDN in higher interest rates, embarrassing conversations and countless hours trying to fix this store’s mistake. All they feel obliged to do was to send a letter to Equifax stating their mistake. They refuse to compensate me for the money I lost and time I wasted fixing their mistake. I have contacted the President’s office, only to be threatened with “legal action” (this happened when I mentioned telling the public about the issue, since they were doing nothing about it). To make the issue more confusing, Sears sold its credit card department to JPMorgan Chase after this mistake happened (an American bank, which does not care at all about me). JP Morgan Chase offered me a $100 dollar “Goodwill gesture” to go away. In addition, they wanted me to re-activate my card to issue this payment! That does not even cover the time I wasted on the phone with Sears. It seems that Sears washed their hands of me when they sold to JPMorgan, and now JPMorgan doesn’t care at all about this issue. Moreover, I never gave JPMorgan permission to use my information, which I feel violates the Privacy act on some level.
What is one to do? The only thing I did wrong was buy appliances from this big chain store. I have tried contacting the Ministry of Governmental Services, only to be told there was nothing they could do in this matter. There is no fines, no penalties, even no laws governing this aspect of consumer relations. The Better Business Bureau does nothing; they were not even worth contacting in this matter. It seems the big stores want to force litigation to address the issue, but I don’t want to hire a lawyer at this point. I was so desperate that I even posted a video on You tube to pass on my frustrations. I would like to warn your listeners at this point to check their credit rating, especially if you have one of those “Store Credit Cardsâ€. Not only are they higher in interest, but it seems they lack the security and knowhow to prevent a simple error like this from happening. Moreover, they will not help you if they do make a mistake. It’s so easy to report an erroneous rating and so difficult to fix it. Apparently, from what people have been telling me, that this type of mistake happens more often than is seems. Why does this happen and how do we prevent it from happening again. I would not wish what happened to me on anyone else. It was a nightmare. Yet that store still makes money and sucks people in to use their credit cards. If the consumer protection laws had any teeth; if our politicians were concerned about protecting us, then there should be some sort of penalty to those who abuse this system. Maybe a stiff penalty would prevent this from happening to anyone else and give those corporations a good shake up!
At this time, all I want Sears to do is to pick up their stupid appliances and give me my money back (with compounded interest, of course)
I have even more information and outlandish stories about this issue, but had to condense this version. Please feel free to contact me if you need any more info.
I have presented my case to the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments in September, but they are dealing only with JPMorgan Chase and not Sears. I am not holding my breath on this outcome. The Ministry of Government Services just sent me an email (under the leadership of Gerry Phillips, M.P.P) suggesting litigation. Great consumer protection, Ontario (if you have the money)!
Thanks again,
Bob Cunningham
Burlington, ON
Disclaimer
This article was submitted by one of our readers. Penciltrick cannot make any claims as to its authenticity but the article was accepted on a good faith belief that it is an accurate and truthful account of the events listed.
November 30th, 2009 at 9:08 am
After Sears sold off its credit card operations I was charged $25 for having a $68.00 credit balance (they owed me) on my Sears account. When I complained I was told that there was considerable expense in accounting for credit balances and and a notice had been sent to me that if I wanted to avoid this “service charge” I would have to have requested a refund. As I did not recall having seen such a notice, I asked why they had simply not sent the refund cheque if it was so costly to “service” a credit balance? I received no answer to this obvious question. I requested that a refund be issued and a year later received a cheque for $43 (the $68 credit balance less the $25 service charge) It ain’t worth the effort to fight for $25 but Sears is on the family “black list”, a “no shop” zone. It’s cost Sears thousands of dollars in sales.