Complain about a product or service

EquiCredit/Fairbanks Credit

Mike, APO, AE writes (3/25/03):
I am in the military and took out a loan with EquiCredit. I was sent overseas, but prior to moving I set up an automatic allotment to pay my payment. The military finance sent it via mail directly to EquiCredit.

EquiCredit changed their mailing address without notifying me. The US Postal Service forwarded my payment for 12 months as is normal for forwarded mail. I was being charged late fees because of this, I inquired as to why twice via mail with no response. After the 12 months the Postal Service stopped forwarding my payment, I received a statement stating I missed a payment. After next statement (same as the one prior), I called long distance (overseas) to find out what happened to my two payments (the military sent them both). At this time I found out the address that the military was sending my money had changed about 14 months ago.

One payment was sent back to my finance center and forwarded to EquiCredit, one payment never was returned and I was out that money. I sent no less than 5 letters and one to the Federal Trade Commission stating all this with a promise from EquiCredit (and even now Fairbanks)to give me an answer within 60 business days. This was about 3 months ago, no response and a lot of late charges, and I had that money taken out of my pay.

Federal Trade Commission was no help either, they sent me a catalog to order brochures. Long story short, the new company Fairbanks, sent my stuff to their lawyers and I ended up paying their lawyer fees (over $2,000), almost losing my house, a lot of late charges and never got my money back.

As stated above, I had to pay their lawyer fees, late charges up the butt, and never got my payment money back and no answer from either EquiCredit or Fairbanks. All in all about close to $4,000 in economic damage. They gave me a forebearance on my loan to keep my house out of foreclosure and keep my loan from being sold to cover back payments, and I was allowed to stretch out the payments for the next 6 months.

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