Complaint Review: Beneficial Consumer Discount Company

Caution: Beneficial's website payments do not correspond with paper billing. In other words, the website will say that you are current even if you are a month behind. I never looked at our paper bill, I just threw it away because I paid online.

As a result, we have 27 over 30 day late payments, and "deferred interest" of $5500! Deferred interest isn't even mentioned anywhere in our contract. Late fees are supposed to be charged at 10% of the payment or $29/whichever is less. Even if every payment we ever owed had been late, late fees would only amount to about half of $5500.

So, with that in addition to the $7,200 judgment for the signature loan which wasn't late but they said it was, which caused our mortgage payments to be truly late when they locked up our checking account so that we couldn't pay the mortgage, (in addition to the bounced check fees that we had,) we now owe Beneficial $50,000, seven years after buying the house for $37,500, at 13.343% interest although the contract said 12.99% interest, and paying $428 per month.

I don't know what the house appraises for, since we didn't get a copy of the appraisal report that we paid Beneficial for in 1999, but my guess is that it now appraises for around $45,000. We are not talking a mansion.

They seem to be in the business of one thing- foreclosing on houses. We owe them either $2,800, $428, or $0, depending if you look at the paper bill, the website, or talk to their attorney. Their billiing also does not correspond to what they report to the credit agencies.

Hopefully, we can stop them through bankruptcy. If not, I think I'd rather rent than deal with Beneficial. Our house stood empty for two years before we bought it from Beneficial. It was a foreclosure then from the prior owners. The housing market in our rural area has declined since then, so houses don't usually sell as quickly as two years in this area these days.

witheld out of fear of retaliation
Could be any city, Pennsylvania
U.S.A.