Complaint Review: RC Willey

This is a copy of the letter that we sent to the president, William S. Child, in the main office at Salt Lake City, UT. it is in response to our experience with purchasing a grandfather clock at the RC Willey's Boise, ID store and their billing/accounting practices.
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William S. Child
Chief Executive officer
R.C. Willey Home Furnishings, Inc.
2301 South 300 West
Salt Lake City, Utah 84115-2516


Dear Sir,

I am deeply concerned with the record and account keeping, at your home furnishings store in Boise, Idaho. I purchased a anniversary grandfather clock, for my wife, for our 1st anniversary and Christmas of 1999. She was absolutely thrilled, and the gift was a success, however what followed has been nothing but a nightmare.

I have faithfully paid on the clock-gift, as instructed (I have the original receipts). I was on the delayed payment program set up by your Boise store. (See attached)first payment was due 4-25-2000.

We (myself and my wife) went in together to pay for the purchase, we paid for the purchase with cash and have the original receipts. We were also told that we had a grace period of time to pay on our purchase, which was 10 days, from the due date, our due date was the 25th and we were told by your staff that after the 5th of the following month, that the payment was considered late, and a small late fee would be incurred. Our payment was $32.00.

During our payment plan on our clock, a RC Willeys credit card was introduced to us, as an added benefit to our shopping convience, we accepted the card but demanded that our purchase of our clock and any credit card purchases, were to be kept completely separate. Another words we did not at any time purchase the clock with a credit card, the clock contract was to be a simple straight forward contract.

We continued to faithfully pay on our clock, each month. After a year we noticed an alarming trend our balance never went down, but staying the same or growing bigger. By this time we had paid $288.00 that was supposed to be going in payment for the clock. What we found was we were charged an enormous interest fee of $14.97 a month, and to our shock a "late" fee each month of $30.00, totally neutralizing any payments we had made.

We spoke to the clerks at the Home furnishing store, and no one really knew exactly what to tell us. In the year of 2001 we paid a total of $384.00 more, and in 2002 we again paid our payments faithfully and added another $384.00 more paid toward this clock, we also requested several readouts from the Boise store, NONE of each, have our payments correct or our total correct, and they contradict each other!

We continued to pay our payments until March of 2003, we had paid a grand total OF $1,184.00 in clock payments that did not include the $50.00 paid to hold the clock before Christmas, so the GRAND TOTAL is actually around $1,234.00.

We have all the paid receipts. We are now being threatened by the finance dept. of your company RC Willey stating we owe the full purchase of the clock we JUST PAID FOR! And threatening our credit rating, if we don't pay them another $1,000.00 or so in payments.

In our day this was called "extortion" threatening to ruin our credit, and good name if you do not receive even more money. So I did some research and talked to some agencies, the first is the auditing Federal agency-Dept. of finance and financial institutions, they are VERY interested in your accounting fees and methods and messed up totaled statements we have requested ,and have, from several points in this endless paying snafu.

The auditing dept. of the FBI was also VERY interested, in reviewing our paperwork, and honest payments on this account We also registered you with an agency called the Rip-off report, a citizen action group who monitors bad business practices, and they in turn are monitored by Federal Law enforcement and Federal prosecutors located in the immediate area of that bad business.

What we are asking of you? That the account be fairly, properly reviewed, that the extensive money and payments be properly accredited to the account, you should have top notch records-right! If you do not have the proper receipts, we are willing to make copies of these receipts and pass them through a monitoring agency such as the Federal Dept. of Financing and Financial institutions or the accounting section of the FBI. Sorry, the good guys" get first dibs if you cannot straighten out or find our monies paid. We also want the account properly accredited and closed, with a positive credit given, and all the proper credit agencies notified( Equifax, TransUnion, Experian etc.) of the positive credited account, and we want it all in writing,

Awaiting your expedient reply,
****
Hopefully this letter will be informative to you if you are thinking about buying stuff from RC Willey. I have never seen anything like this and my uncle, a prominent clergyman, recommended these guys because they were based out of Salt Lake. I guess they don't care about What Would Jesus Do, huh? God have mercy on this poor widow's son when it comes to trying to straighten out the mess these guys have caused!

Ken
Kent, Washington
U.S.A.