Complain about a product or service

CompUSA - Financing

Carl of Sand Springs OK (10/23/07)
I purchased at CompUSA a computer (6 months no interest). I made 6 payments to pay all principal. The sixth payment was due a week or ten days prior to the regular payment so I didn't qualify for the no interest. I wrote requesting an adjustment. By the time I got the rejection letter, I had received a statement with a $19 late fee. I paid all interest charges, but not the late fee. This late fee is now $88. I will never pay this.

This has damaged my credit and my faith in Corporate America.

Rose of Monroe CT (06/12/06)
I ordered 2 Macintosh G5 Quad computers from the Orange, CT CompUSA store last November 18th. They set up a store credit card with HSBC Finance and said they needed to charge my purchase to this card before they could order the computers. They indicated the financing they were able to obtain through HSBC was for one year with no interest. Not only did they charge the two computers (which they insisted they needed to do to place an order from Apple), they also charged my account for a monitor, system upgrades, extended warranties, and software that they didn't need to order as they are always in stock at their Orange, CT location. I had no idea that they did this - they just put all of these products on this credit account without asking me or subsequently telling me.

Although I had not yet received any merchandise, I received my first bill from HSBC early in December showing that the charge (for over $12,000) had been placed on the charge account on November 18th. Also, the financing which they had promised me was not reflected on this bill. I was told by my sales person, Charles Rivera, that it takes several months for HSBC to straighten out financing durations and programs but that eventually, the correct terms would appear on my bill. On December 21st I received a call that the computers were in. At that time all the product was ready for delivery and they sent a courier to my home with the product. I told my sales person that I would not accept delivery unless I saw some type of written proof that the financing had been submitted to HSBC correctly and he agreed to send that proof with the courier.

When the courier arrived with all this equipment, he had a screen shot from Mr. Rivera's computer indicating the terms I had agreed to before making my purchase. The courier said I could not KEEP this piece of paper and that I was never to tell anyone that I had seen it as it was against store policy. Feeling uneasy about the statement, I made a photo copy of the paper and gave the original back to the courier. In the months that have passed, I have tried repeated to straighten out the financing situation with CompUSA but to no avail. I finally got a representative from HSBC Finance on the phone and after reviewing my account, she indicated that no one from the Orange, CT CompUSA had ever contacted them and there was NEVER any other type of financing in place. After three weeks of trying to get a call back from Gil Jacobs, General Manager of this CompUSA, he was unwilling to listen to my complaints. I faxed him a letter with all my concerns and what I expected him to do to remedy these situations. I received an email from him indicating that he had done all he was going to do, which is basically nothing.

This left me with a HUGE problem because the expiration date on my financing was May 22nd instead of November 18th. If I did not pay the balance in full by that date, I was going to be charged well over $1000 in finance charges. While I would have been able to pay the entire purchase off within one year, this was quite a surprise to me and I had to take a loan to keep from paying all the acrued finance charges. In addition, I was charged in advance for goods and services that did NOT need to be special ordered. This is a very unfair practice and in fact, I should have had an additional month to pay those purchases. Furthermore, my warranties all show November 18th as the purchase date so I am also being cheated out of 34 days in my warranty periods I was also supposed to receive a physical box with the Apple warranties which I paid for. I never received them at all. Mr. Jacobs insists that they were given to me but they were not and he would do nothing further to help me remedy this problem.

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