Nationwide Credit discloses personal information to wife on Amex Account, Robert Paisola Investigates
Mr. Paisola,
I read some of the transcripts and listened to some of the audio links of your calls with collectors. I can relate to these. I know how these debtors feel when talking to the collectors especially regarding Nationwide Credit, Inc. I have/had a business credit card account with AMX. This was a business account I used for my company and/my employees used. I own a trucking company and this was my business card. I had a balance of roughly 17,000.00 and now with all the fees and interest it has risen to over 19,400.00. As the trucking business has taken a big hit on the fuel and low freight wages I fell behind. Until this point I was making the payments and had a credit score in the 720's. Now in the 500's. But I make some small payment which did not cover the min. and it was turned over to NCI in the late Jan early Feb. 2008 time frame. I am only home late in the evenings 7 or 8 p.m. and leave by 6:30 morning so, they NCI had made some calls to my home but I was away. My wife has about the same schedule. I learned of this collection through my wife. I came in and she was crying and very upset. She (my wife) said a man called from a collector and asked her to take care of this debt. She told her she was not aware of this and he would have to speak to me on this (She did not know). I didn't want to upset her on a late bill because we have always paid and paid on time. Our credit was something we could hold our heads high about) My wife said he got really crappy and mean with her and told her she was covering up for me and that your husband didn't want to answer the call because he don't want to pay his bills then went on to explain to her that she or I would have to pay the account in full by 10:00 a.m. the next day and that she needed to get in touch with me and have me call him before they had to take further actions. This really scared her and surprised her of this.
I called NCI the next day and spoke with a collector there. I informed the woman I was calling regarding a call about a call to my wife they placed on a collection of mine. She gave me the gentleman's name handling my account and transferred me to him. He at first was pretty crappy and told me I had to pay a minimum of 50% of this debt today before any further actions would be taken. I explained to him there was no way I could do that. He then asked what I proposed to do about the debt. I said I wasn’t to pay it but I can not pay you 9500.00 because I do not have it. He told me to come up with something and call him back. I told him no here is what I can do now. I want to pay 200.00 today. He explained no that wasn’t even worth talking about. I had to come up with more and he could not accept that because his manager would not take that. After much communication and me explaining my situation he started to lighten up some but still would not accept my offer of 200.00 today. I had to tell him I was expecting some additional income in within the next 3 weeks and would try to pay a large sum then. He wanted to know how much. I told him most likely 3 thousand. Well that brought him around to trying but said I still can't accept the 200.00 until he spoke with his manager to see if he could accept it. He put me on hold for some time then came back on the line and said he got it ok'd for me but I had to set this up as an auto draft from my bank and that I had to go ahead and set up a 50.00 payment one month later just to show I am trying to make the effort. I accepted this and set these two transactions up for auto withdraws from my checking. He told him I would call him call him back on Tuesday of the next week with some type of plan. Because I had no idea what I could work out at the time. I was no ready for this. I knew I had $300 to my name and had to buy groceries for the family so I offered the $200 not thinking how I was getting back and forth to work the next week. So I had to sell my lawn mower to get gas money to go to work. I made it through it that week thank goodness no unexpected expenses occurred that week that would have cost me a day of work.
The following Tuesday, still with no money or a plan, but work looking up and more money to be made I called anyway. A woman answered, did not get her name and now that I listen to you audio I know I should have got this first thing. Anyway, I asked for the gentleman, she said he is in a meeting and was not available but she could help, what is your account number? So, I gave it to her. Right off the bat she asked, are you calling to pay the account in full. I said no maim, I am calling back to speak with the gentlemen that I was working with last week on a plan. She said well he is not available and I am working it now, what are going to pay? I said I am not sure and I wanted to explain this to him and that I have some more work coming up and could get on a plan soon. She told me, well your account is past due and you have to pay 50% today. I told her, Oh no here we go again. I don't have it but want to work on paying my debt, I made it and I think I am obligated, she let me know quick I was obligated and the least they could accept would be 30% and she didn't know if she could even accept that or not she would have to go talk to her manager for me. I said no, I don' have $100 in my pocket so I can't pay even that. Ok, can you get the money from somewhere? No. I see you have over $4000.00 on each of your Discover Cards. You can pay it from that. I said, no how is that going to help me robbing Peter to pay Paul. Besides the Discover Cards are locked, I can not charge on them due to my late payment. She explained that it shows neither of them are cancelled and I have money on them to use. I finally told her that I was not doing this. She was all rude and said ok can you get a mortgage or loan? I said no, my credit is bad now. She said you have good credit, and then said well it is 5 hundred something. That is how I found out I went from the 7 hundreds to 5 hundreds. I finally told her I would have to call back. She explains to me I needed to come up with the 30% by tomorrow. I said bye.
I tried back 1 hour later to talk to the Gentleman I was speaking with the week before. The woman answered explained to me he was out of the office sick. I asked, was he there earlier? She said no, he has been out all day and maybe in tomorrow but I am his manager and I can take care you. I said ok. Guess what, I thought this was a rehearsed pitch they all use. She went over the same stuff as the lady before. Wanted me to give her money from my Discover Card. Again no. She then explained to me I had to pay a min. of 50% before tomorrow or they would have to refer my account to other collections dept for litigation, include wage garnishment, property to pay on the account. She was really mean with me and scared me about taking my property or garnishing wages because I need my vehicle to go to work and I need my home for my family so, I told her I didn't need any of that trouble that I wanted to set up some payments. She asked how much, I said $200.00 on Friday and another $200.00 the following Friday. to get her to hold off on this collection going further and buy me some time to get things on track. She said this is not enough but we'll accept it and hopefully it will satisfy AMX for the time being but no guarantee. I said that is all I can do. But the real thing is I didn't know how I was going to do that. I nearly broke with only gas money in my pocket but I was trying to protect my family from having to face losing our car or home. But this bought me some time.
On Wednesday I called back, again the gentleman was in a meeting. I said I will call back. No I can help, I said no I want to speak with him and hung up. Later that day I called again, the woman then told me he was not in the office and was out sick. I told her some of her colleagues need to get their story straight because I was told earlier he was in a meeting. She said no he hasn't been here all day. I said, I will call back. Ok next morning I called and he was in. I explained to him what some of his colleagues had told me and treated me. he laughed and said you know you are about the 10th one that has told me that today. I asked, are they on commission or just rude and right out mean to people. He laughed and said I don't know. So, I went on to tell him I wanted to cancel the drafts scheduled because lack of funds would call back next week with other asked for confirmation and said he couldn't the system was down. I asked if he would make sure this was cancelled and he said yes take my word for it and not a problem.
I have now a friendly hello conversation with the gentleman working my account and no problems. It is hello, how are you doing, etc. At this time I am paying a $300.00 payment monthly. This is not a set payment just money on the account till I can do better. The problem now is the minimum payment is almost $500 a month. But the interest is that same amount. I discussed this with the gentleman at NCI and asked if there was some way I could get the interest lowered and he said it was up to AMX. I have tried day after day to get in touch with someone at AMX in collections dept but no luck. They will only refer me back to NCI. They will not discuss the account with me because they sent it to outside collections. I am trying here to make the effort to pay but AMX will not give me the time of day.
I am stunned and disappointed with AMX over not discussing this or trying to work with me on the interest or late fees because it all keeps adding every month which on the average I am going deeper by over $200.00 a month at this rate. All my other creditors have worked with me and now we are all back on track with the exception of AMX Business account.
Some people say they are surprised AMX would deal with a collection company with harsh tactics but I can see it because they are not even interested in talking to a creditor that is down. It’s like they got you down and want to keep you there and cause you to dig deeper and deeper. I don't know what I am going to do. AMX does not care. This mess has caused me too many sleepless nights, worries, working and stressed to the point now I was sent to the hospital for TIA's which are also known as mini-strokes. The doctors have told me I need to slow down and take life a little easier. I can't with the AMX and NTI hanging over my head because I think they will take further action if I can't do something soon. They seem to be ruthless. We need your assistance. From what I have read on your web site, you sound like the type of person that can help us with this.
Regards.
