To appreciate the frustration of dealing with bureaucratic stupidity and incompetence you need to first read parts 1 and 2 to really appreciate how big business and specifically large financial institutions succeed in compromising consumers day in and day out. You will recall that this saga began on December 26, 2008 when I went to a Sears Roebuck or a "Sears" store to make some purchases.
I am going to insert the letter from the Comptroller of the Currency which was sent to me on June 10, 2009. Please remember that I first wrote to this agency in February, 2009. Please note when reading this letter how they liberally quote from the letter I received from Citibank,South Dakota, NA to justify their inaction and also their lack of understanding of the issue(s) I am bringing to the table. When reading this letter from the OCC I almost started to believe that they work for Citibank South Dakota, NA.
No one ever disputed the right of a business to retain internal records regarding its dealings with customers for as long it deems practicable. My issue here is twofold. The bank lied about the source of the information used to make its decision as is proven by the recording of the phone call I made to them (See Part 1). They claimed their source was Equifax and solely Equifax. Secondarily, I maintain that there is a serious issue of non disclosure here. If you read the bank's disclosure statement on the credit card application do you see any language that would tell you that the bank is relying on old customer records as much as 30 years old?
Most people including me are walking around thinking that when you apply for a credit card that your credit file is pulled from Equifax, TransUnion or Experian. Reports could come from one of them or all three. We now see that in some instances this is not the case, i.e, that other sources of information are relied on.
The other block buster that the bank is getting away with is their rather liberal use of the term "existing account" If I asked you to define the term existing account for me, what would you say? Please post an answer to this on this blog. As you know the bank has its own definition of "existing account" as you have already read.
Citibank, South Dakota, NA/Sears defines existing account as any account I have now or have had in the past even if it was 20 or 30 years ago and even if the account is closed, the debt has been sold or the debt was discharged in bankruptcy.
If you read this letter from the OCC they state that Sears understands my dissatisfaction regarding the declined application. Again the OCC never read the file carefully as far as I can discern. I did not ask Sears for a credit card. I was going to pay cash;they asked me to apply for one. Additionally I was given the credit card application(hard copy) after being induced to apply for the credit card.
My effort here is to somehow encourage those who make our laws on the state and federal level to force those who grant credit and impact the financial welfare of consumers to treat consumers with respect and dignity; not to confuse them or obfuscate an understanding of the true facts as illustrated I hope by the present case.
When there are too many credit inquiries on your credit report it can lower your FICO score. I believe people who apply for credit accounts, installment accounts or other types of loans have the right to know specifically what information a creditor is going to rely on. The term "other information" which Citibank South Dakota, NA employs is very insufficient in my humble opinion.
I am going to lobby my Congressional representatives and try to be instrumental so that the Fair Credit Reporting Act be amended specifically so that consumers understand that when they make credit applications they know exactly what facts and information about them are being used in when credit decisions are made.
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Comments
You should also pursue this from the antitrust angle because it suggests a possible reason to disallow corporate mergers among banks because it allows them to merge identities and to suddenly “grow a grudge” against individual consumers that have ever been harmed before.
And, finally, you might argue (I'm not sure on the basis of what category of law, but perhaps against fraud) that any bank that knows something about you and allows you to become a customer anew at all without indicating that you will be a second-class customer subject to discrimination is not doing some form of full disclosure. Presumably the argument could reasonably be constructed that their best option is to not have you as a customer rather than to accept you as a customer to whom their standard set of options does not apply, and that if they are allowing you to apparently be a customer, they have an obligation to tell you that they have restored their grudge at the time of your application. The injury to you here is that at the time of need for the loan, even just an application for a loan is visible on your report, since a "too many requests for credit information" is visible to you. So if they make you apply for credit knowing they will deny it for reasons unrelated to that, they are using up your ability to apply and implicitly causing your chances at a next application to be lessened. This might also be regarded as a way of sending subtle signals to other banks without being overt about it and hence covered as well under antitrust statutes of some such.
Or so it seems to me. I'm not a lawyer. But I would find a competent one and collect questions from people about avenues to pursue.
Note well: It may indeed be that you've done something that they are entitled to be mad at you for beyond the limits of the time where a bankruptcy formally heals you. But I think that's irrelevant in this limited case. Disclosure laws form the meta-substrate that allows our banking system, indeed our entire business system, to function fairly. If the rules by which businesses operate are not auditable, then it's like saying we have a democracy but we don't know if our voting machines work. The very notion that you are allowed to ask for your credit report and to get it free is a statement implicit by Congress at least (and perhaps there is explicit preamble in the legislation—I would look) that people are entitled as a kind of moral issue to understand what they are up against and to decide who they will rationally engage and who not. Once “the people who have the money” can just make up rules “because they can” then any notion that we're here for any reason other than to be squeezed until we bleed kind of goes out of the window.
Sorry for running on, but I hope this is helpful. If there's anything more I can offer in the way of analysis or suggestion on this, please let me know.