
David of Kirkville, NY on Oct. 26, 2004
We moved into a new home last year and furnished the entire home with nearly $6000 in merchandise from Lowes. Because we hadn't closed yet on the house // we obtained the credits from our builder // and because of the volume of material we purchased, we opened a Lowe's credit account, which we later learned was held by Monogram Bank of Georgia. We were told that we would have 12 months' interest free and that as long as the balance was paid in full during that period, no interest would be charged. The store management also promised a 10% (New Home) discount for ALL the merchandise we bought.
Because we made the purchases on the account and had most of the items delivered later by delivery truck to our new home, we simply provided them with a detailed list with stock numbers, pricing, special advertised rebate information, etc. We never received store receipts for the bulk of these items because of the way we purchased them.
We later had several problems after delivery of the items with our billing statements. Not all the items received the 10% discount as agreed, and very few if any of the rebates were applied, resulting in total billings of approximately $400 more than should have been charged. We live about an hour's drive from the store location and made numerous attempts to straighten things out with the store management, but weren't successful.
In October of last year, we were assured by the store manager that everything would be redone and billed correctly, and that the store would rest the 12/month interest free period so it wouldn't end until November 2004. In November of 2003, we received all of the funding we needed to pay the card off completely as we had planned. However, we received a statement that was again in error and about $400 too high. We sent a payment equal to the correct amount (around $5,200) along with a letter explaining that store management was to have straightened out the issue with their credit/billing company. Still, we kept getting monthly statements showing a $400 balance, though we contacted the store and the credit center on numerous occasions.
Around May or June of this year, the credit center tacked an additional $400 on our account plus late fees, claiming that we had gone past the interest/free promotion period, and that instead of zero, our balance was now up to about $900. Furious and aggravated that we had spent all this time trying to straighten this out, with this result, we started getting phone calls from a "Monogram Bank of Georgia". We didn't recognize the name so I looked it up on the Internet, and the first thing I saw was multiple sites regarding the class action lawsuit against the company. When we looked further, we saw that Monogram was the Lowe's Credit Center.
After taking even more time to explain the situation, Lowe's Credit Center quickly admitted that applying the $400 interest was a mistake and took it off the account, along with late charges, and promised they would fully investigate the remaining disputed balance of approximately $400. They never did. They copied a series of statements and later said that I would have to work with the store again to resolve the discrepancies.
This month, my balance went from $400 to over $900 again with only about $100 or so in legitimate purchases last month. When I called the Lowe's Credit Center, the customer service representative looked up the information on our account and (after keeping me on hold for 25 minutes) came back and said "the balance is correct sir." I asked how my balance increased by over $500 when I only had purchases of $100 and she claimed that previous billing statements showed the higher balance, which is not correct. They were in the $400 range which was still in dispute.
The problems we have endured, the wasted time, and the threat to our sterling credit rating have made this an unending nightmare for more than a year. That is the appreciation we get for furnishing our entire home through Lowe's. There is a complete communication breakdown between the retail outlets and the people that do the accounting and billing and we're STUCK in the middle. They have refused to provide us with a single detailed itemization that would substantiate their claim that we owed them that additional $400, because we don't owe it! They want $1000 from us and we owe them a little more than $100.
Because of their errors, we have faced a lot of wasted time and frustration, multiple trips to the retail store itself, the risk of damaged credit, and fraudulent charges of approximately $800.