WC Welch, Houston, Texas
Complaint 77260 Details

RE: MISREPRESENTATION OF CITICARDS DINERS CLUB COLLECTION ORGANIZATION

I have been paying down an unavoidable hardship debt to Citicards Diners Club for some 4 years and was under the impression that the money was being taken each month by Diners Club. There have been no late payments.

On January 30th, I received a phone call from a gentleman by the name of Ken Patton, working with an alleged law firm, WC French (no location or other information given). Mr. Patton said that I was seriously delinquent on my payments and he was also seeking a settlement. I said that I was incapable of making that settlement also but would be happy to accelerate payments and pay down what I thought was the balance of some $2300.

After I had made that arrangement, per WC Welch's request,which included faxing six checks in the amount of $225 each month, I e-mailed Mr. Patton (I have his e-mail address) asking him to confirm with Diners that I was now paying WC Welch. He never responded to that e-mail..I also requested that only the first check be taken out, not on the 5th of each month as was the usual practice, but on February 11th. Again, I never received an aswer or confirmation.

That brings me to Friday, February 10th, when I called the law firm to be sure that they would wait until the following day to deduct the first of the payments and learned that they had already processed the first payment. I was livid and insisted that the payment be stopped until Saturday the 11th. Instead, a very adamant and, at times, rude Mr. Patton told me I would be making a serious mistake doing that and that this money had to be taken because I had two delinquent accounts.

I was stunned. My understanding was that I had been paying down (for some four years) only one account and the balance originally had been around $6000. The law firm suddenly brought in a credit manager who told me in no uncertain terms that there were two accounts. He also said that Harris Bank, which allegedly had been handling Diners Club had sold the accounts to Bank of Montreal and that Bank of Montreal had divided them.

When I suggested calling Diners or Bank of Montreal, I was told (not asked) not to call either party. Diners, I was told, wouldn’t know anything about these new financial arrangements, because they had assigned collection to Bank of Montreal. And I was told that if I called Bank of Montreal, they would probably immediately demand the full amount for collection. That sounded totally preposterous to me.

Further, the credit manager humiliated me by asking all sorts of questions about my wife’s and my income, whether I could simply consolidate this loan through a credit union or another bank and how much I could realistically pay. By the time the call ended, the law firm was assuring me that if I called on Monday, the 13th, they would have a nice comfortable consolidation amount worked out for me.

I hung up and was emotionally drained. Frankly, I feel that I had been treated like some deadbeat. I was a respected Diners Club customer for over 20 years before all this happened. We are trying to repay debt after a 2008 and 2009, respectively, job loss, maintain a mortgage while trying to sell our home and certainly not take on more debt.

I decided to contact Diner's Club anyway and learned to my shock that no WC Welch had been contracted to collect for them and I was instructed by Diners to stop payment on all six checks immediately, which I did that afternoon through my bank, Bank of America. I never recontacted WC Welch and they never contacted me again. My assumption is that once their check didn't clear, they knew I had discovered the scam.

I have written this letter of complaint because I wanted you to know how much emotional pain this scam predatory collection has caused me and my wife. Diners has called to apologize, but even that isn't really enough. I could have been paying out $1350 needlessly. I would like retribution of some kind. I don't deserve this kind of treatment.