I submitted a claim to the place where the money orders were purchased hoping it will not take months to get my money back. Now I am trying to decide on my next move to address the issue with Conn's. I live in a one party consent state and I recorded the telphone call with the assistant manager. I welcome suggestions, advice, wisdom.
Also, the payment history provided by Conn's to the CFPB has an entry which says, "Current Unearned Amount". Can anyone enlighten me as to what that amount represents?
That unearned amount is the interest that is accruing on the account but not collected from you yet.
I suggest contacting your state's Attorney Generals office that deals with consumer affairs, especially now that you know the payments were shredded!
It is the responsibility of these offices to act on consumers' behalf. I think you will get results. My situation was completely resolved once these guys got involved a few years ago.
My situation was different than yours but like you I got nowhere dealing with the creditor. It took ONE letter from the AG office of consumer affairs and my creditor removed 3 years of unauthorized "account protection" charges, resulting in a sizeable check cut on my behalf.
Good luck.
I'm sorry to be late to the game. I don't browse posts here frequently ...
Most people don't encounter a problem such as you've experienced. They receive a bill from a creditor and, if they make payment by mail. use the return envelope for payment, which ensures that it's mailed to the proper address.
It's a critical mistake to think that you can use your best judgment on where to mail a payment yourself without getting authoritative confirmation first. In other words, you didn't physically pay anything to your credit account. While they may accept payments at the store, you billing and/or account agreement stipulate the only address at which mailed payments will be accepted.
Conn's wasn't responsible for their refusal to process a mailed payment (although it's pretty crappy of them to destroy your payments without making some effort to contact you and advise you of the error ... but that's their perogative in this situation). Synchrony, the account issuer to whom payments are due, has no way of knowing about the payment attempts, until such time you try to work out some type of resolution with them.
Now, don't get the impression that I'm trying to bust on you over this. We all make errors and are responsible for the consequences. I look to clarify where you stand in this circumstance and then address your best course of action by which to recover.
You've fortunately held onto the money order copies (which out which you would have been SOL in recovering your funds). So hopefully that will be resolved with time.
The remaining issue is to pay the delinquent balance as soon as possible to avoid further damage to your credit history (the account appears to be reporting in your name). For the time being, you'll likely have to pay late payments penalties as well.
A critical aspect underlying most of the problems here is that it appears that you aren't receiving the monthly statements on this account. I assume that because your first indication of the delinquency was a credit monitoring alert, rather than a statement, which would have alerted you to a problem much sooner. Whatever the problem is here, resolve it ASAP.
A statement will advise you of how best to contact Synchrony re your account. (It's not clear how you previously made contact.) When calling, you need to specifically ask to speak to an account manager and explain the situation, asking if they can help you mitigate the situation by possible removal of delinquencies on your credit report and a full or partial reversal of some late fees.
I'll suggest that they're under no obligation to grant you anything. They're obligation as account issuer is to see that payments that are made as directed are credited. So, I'll suggest that your request is being made "hat in hand". A strong issuer would acknowledge your misunderstanding re payment policy and do what they can to assist. Synchrony has a mixed record on that account.
If an account manager says they can do nothing to help, ask how you might appeal this. If they fail to assist further with such an appeal, your best recourse may be to reach out with a letter to an appropriate executive at Synchrony.
Elliott Advocacy suggests the following contacts at Synchrony:
Executive Contacts
<mod edit: removed names and contact information>
I can't vouch for the accuracy of this information.
I would suggest attempting a resolution with the State AG only after attempting these avenues. Again, on the basis of the facts that you present, Synchrony committed no wrongful act.
I appreciate very much that my comments were accepted in a constructive manner.
Re the Conn's Home Plus credit programs: After reviewing their webpage, I feel very confident that the credit card program involved here is owned and operated by Synchrony and that Conn's has no part in the management of the program, beyond staffing a credit services desk in the store.
Re monthly statements: It's a matter of inviting difficulties to actively use a credit card account for which you don't receive monthly statements. There's no excuse for a credit program not providing such statements upon request (it should be automatic, provided they have your correct address on file). Further, I would strongly advise anyone who isn't receiving monthly statements not to make use of such an account, until such time as monthly statement service was restored.
There are simply to many things that can go wrong and it's critical to review your monthly account activity to catch any inaccuracies before they snowball into greater problems (this instance an example).
My concern is that if you attempt to resolve this through the store, you're dealing with it indirectly and may achieve subpar results.
Re store payments: I grasp that payments in person are accepted at the store. And I understand the reason why you stopped making such payments in person. But I'll stress that even though you formerly made payments in person at the store, that gives you absolutely no basis to assume that mailing a payment to the store will be correctly credited to your account, UNLESS information on the statement specifically advises that payments to that address are acceptable. I grasp the assumption you made, but unfortunately it wasn't correct.
I stress the points above because, in your attempts to resolve this in your favor, stressing information that is (at least partially) at odds with the bottom line facts will not work to your advantage. It's important to recognize that some of your actions may have contributed to the problems you have experienced. It working with someone to make the best of things as they are, it may be best to largely set aside discussion of what led up to the present disposition of things and simply focus on what can be done now to make things "better".
