Is there some way to pay down Discover faster?

[Anonymous]

I'm going to get straight to the point here.

I've been trying to help my mother pay down her credit cards and we've been having trouble with Discover. For reasons I'm not going to go into detail, someone decided to use her card and rack up about $8000. $2500 which is cash advances. This person was able to add themselves as an authorize user without her knownledge and do this. Discover refuses to dispute this at all since he was an authorize user. Even if it was an unauthoize authorize user. She is paying around $220/month, which 190 is interest alone. We tried to get an APR reduction and she wasn't able to get it. We were able to open an Amex and get a balance transfer offer for 15 months in which we paid off 3 of her other cards with. That Amex is due to be paid off in about 6 months. So balance transfers are out of the question for at least a year or two while we try to build her scores back up. I've been told there are ways to get the credit card debt turned into some sort of installment loan of some sort that you could pay off a lot faster... Any ideas?

[Anonymous]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I'm going to get straight to the point here.

I've been trying to help my mother pay down her credit cards and we've been having trouble with Discover. For reasons I'm not going to go into detail, someone decided to use her card and rack up about $8000. $2500 which is cash advances. This person was able to add themselves as an authorize user without her knownledge and do this. Discover refuses to dispute this at all since he was an authorize user. Even if it was an unauthoize authorize user. She is paying around $220/month, which 190 is interest alone. We tried to get an APR reduction and she wasn't able to get it. We were able to open an Amex and get a balance transfer offer for 15 months in which we paid off 3 of her other cards with. That Amex is due to be paid off in about 6 months. So balance transfers are out of the question for at least a year or two while we try to build her scores back up. I've been told there are ways to get the credit card debt turned into some sort of installment loan of some sort that you could pay off a lot faster... Any ideas?

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That really sucks what happened here.

I have to ask, though: All major issuers have a zero fraud policy with their credit products (one reason why using debit cards sucks), and at the most some random financial institution may have you pay $50 max out of pocket. I'm curious why Discover isn't handling this AS a dispute based on fraud.

Any part of the story missing here?

[AverageJoesCredit]

A Personal loan would pay it off .

There must be more to this story that Op feels not sharing which is their right.i will say without that info, it will be hard for anyone to offer advice pertaining to that part. If it was fraud, She should not be responsible. However Op is looking for ways to pay down faster which means Op's Mom has somehow accepted the debt accrued. I recommended the personsl loan since that can wipe out the debt like that but then are left with paying a pl. Good luck Op

[Anonymous]

So full story here with some details still removed. She never opened the Discover card, her husband did. She didn't know about the card until about a year ago and wasn't happy about it. She kept the card since it had a somewhat high credit limit for her at the time. What she didn't know is that he added himself as an authorize user and had his own card. She thought she had the only card. He was paying the bill for the longest until one day she got credit karma and saw that it was basically maxed out. She called Discover and figured out what happened. I guess since he was an authorize user and he had been for so long that they didn't believe it was fraud. Also, she wasn't paying much attention to the card since she thought she had the only card and she wasn't using it at the time. So the charges she was trying to dispute were already at least 6 months old. That's all I know.

Also, a personal loan is out of the question since her scores are mid 500s and almost no one will approve her for the loan. The ones that will approve her basically have the same APR. And they also require her to close all her cards since it's considered a debt consolidation loan. Which she also doesn't want to close all of her cards. She doesn't mind closing most of them, but a few she wants to keep.

[SBR249]

In this case, the "original sin" I would say isn't fraud but identity theft. Her husband opened the card without her knowledge using her identity and creditworthiness. Regardless of the circumstances the first thing to do should have been to close the account.

When she kept the card, that can be considered an implicit acceptance of the terms of the contract governing the card as well as liability for the debts incurred on the account by her and any authorized user that existed at that time. Basically when she kept the card, she accepted all the conditions attached to the account at that point in time (including the AU). Even if she didn't know about the AU when she decided to keep it, pleading ignorance will likely not help since it is incumbent on the contracting parties to know what they are agreeing to. So moving forward, any charges made by her and the AU would be considered "authorized" and you would no longer have recourse to contest them as fraudulent. 

Going back and arguing that the card was opened without her consent would likely not work because that lack of consent was likely superseded by her acceptance when she decided to keep the card. I believe that when it comes to fraud and such, there are time limits imposed on the consumer to promptly notify the lender to contest the fraudulent actions. Failure to do some may transfer liability onto the consumer. The FTC website says that the time to dispute a CC charge is by writing within 60 days after the first bill containing the charge in question was first sent. 

[SBR249]

I realize of course, after reading my post, that the OP is probably aware of a lot of this and it doesn't really help the situation. 

I'd say maybe try closing the Discover and then asking for a settlement or APR reduction on the remaining balance. Essentially bring out the charm and plead for goodwill. 

[Anonymous]

If it were me, I would go to the party that racked up the charges and get them to help pay it down- if not pay all of it off.

[Kree]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I'm going to get straight to the point here.

I've been trying to help my mother pay down her credit cards and we've been having trouble with Discover. For reasons I'm not going to go into detail, someone decided to use her card and rack up about $8000. $2500 which is cash advances. This person was able to add themselves as an authorize user without her knownledge and do this. Discover refuses to dispute this at all since he was an authorize user. Even if it was an unauthoize authorize user. She is paying around $220/month, which 190 is interest alone. We tried to get an APR reduction and she wasn't able to get it. We were able to open an Amex and get a balance transfer offer for 15 months in which we paid off 3 of her other cards with. That Amex is due to be paid off in about 6 months. So balance transfers are out of the question for at least a year or two while we try to build her scores back up. I've been told there are ways to get the credit card debt turned into some sort of installment loan of some sort that you could pay off a lot faster... Any ideas?

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Can't you balance transfer to the AMEX again in 6 months once the original BT was payed off?

[Anonymous]

With scores like that, it may be time to consider the benefits of debt consolidation or a debt management plan, regardless of losing the accounts. The way that payments are applied, the entire minimum payment is going towards the ~$5500 balance that was charged up and anything over the minimum goes to the cash advances. The minimum payment on the total balance is going to be about $240 so you don’t start tackling that high interest balance until you tack on more to the minimum. 

If she has the income, it’s doable, but she’s going to pay through the nose in interest on the cash advances. A debt management plan could drop the interest rate down to under 4.9% and some cards will go even lower (a buddy of mine had his Disco dropped to 1.99% when he entered into a DMP). 

Sometimes its best to just start over.