Complaint Review: Bill Me Later

This is pretty much a copy of a letter I generated to the United States Postal Service over the actions of Bill Me Later, backed by the CIT Bank in Salt Lake City.

BillMeLater does a service through Newegg.com allowing customers to have no payments for 90 days. We have taken advantage of this service multiple times over the past couple of years, and aside from an incident in 2007 which took over 4 months to drag a refund out of the company (Newegg directed the refund for this broken printer through BillMeLater, our first encounter with their poor records keeping and unwillingness to correct records or admit that BillMeLater had failed to keep accurate records), have had little trouble.

However, on a purchase made on 7/7/2008 which cleared BillMeLaters $250 mark by a wide margin and was accepted into the 90 days no payment, we suddenly started receiving invoices for minimum payments and additional finance charges about a month after the purchase. Somebody in BillMeLater goofed. We contacted the company and made it plain that we were not going to pay the finance charges, and there were no minimum payments, per their own advertising and per the receipt from Newegg. We finished paying off the $456.15 within the 90 day period.

However, after making it clear to Bill Me Later in multiple mailed letters that as far as we were concerned, the bill was paid and finalized, we continued to receive invoices for additional payments to be made.

One of the conclusions we can reach is that Bill Me Later is attempting to commit consumer fraud and rip us off by deliberately failing to acknowledge their advertising and correct their records. Sending Bill Me Later physical printed copies of the Newegg.com receipt and explaining out in plain detail that there were not going to be any minimum payments or finance charges on a 90-day no pay did nothing to correct the company. So now, we are here. Either Bill Me Later is simply incompetent at record keeping, or their backing bank is out to rip off consumers by saying one thing, then doing another.

Saist
Evans, Georgia
U.S.A.