Complaint Review: GEMB Care Credit - Orlando Florida

I took "advantage" of Care credit upon advice from a doctor to get the payment made to him before the insurance would cover it, and Care Credit, over the phone arranged my monthly payments to be $45/mo for the first 6 mo, and if the entire account was paid in full before the 6 month period ended, and payments were made regularly and not late, there would be 0% interest. I agreed because I knew my insurance company would pay promptly (they're that good) and waited for a bill to come. The paper was signed at my April 13th visit, and on May 15 I got a bill for $53! I called them immediately and got a telepeop who claimed that I hadn't made my first payment on tie so the promotional 0% was canceled. I asked him when I was supposed to have gotten that "first bill, since it was one month and two days since the signing of the agreement. He said he would investigate it and call me back. No call was forthcoming, until I got my next bill that was for $65! I called again and was put through the same rigamarole and lies and they said if I made a "good faith payment of the two bills, things would go more smoothly and they could straighten it all out. I did so immediately, over the phone, and the next bill I received was also with interest. I called again and got the same nonsense about missing the first payment. I then received the insurance check and sent them the remainder of the $2000 minus the $53 and $65 already paid. I wrote on the check that it was for payment in full, account closed with no balance due, and they cashed it. Then began the harassing phone calls at all hours telling me what a bad person I was not to pay the money due them for services I received. I said over and over in all these calls that I never received a bill before the $53 one, and was therefore incorrectly charged the interest, and a couple of times since then I've been "in dispute" with them, which only meant that they stopped calling for two weeks while they "investigated it", and each time I received a letter saying that their investigators had decided that I was in error and hadnt' paid the first payment in time, so I owed them all the interest and fees they continued to pile onto the bogus balance.

After a year and 4 months, the "balance due" is now in collections and has been repeatedly reported to the credit bureaus and is now over $634--all bogus fees and charges when I paid the account in full last July, three months before the 6 mo period ended.

Their bogus investigations into the situation just stretched it all out forever.

We answer the calls now, that come at 8:50 on Sunday mornings usually, and other random times from ERMI another "reputable" company I'm sure, and speak to people in India, Canada and god knows where else they have their call centers. These people read from scripts and say the same things over and over not listening to anything I say. I'll keep saying it, keep them on their phones being paid by their company to annoy me. It's probably cost Someone out there quite a bit to harass me all this time, their loss. I've disputed the claims with the credit bureaus, and reported them on several of these consumer complaint websites, as well as talking to every doctor's office in my area where I see their "Proud to offer Care Credit" signs and tell them the whole story too. I've noticed several signs are now out of sight or gone--good for them!

It's too bad because they could probably make more legitimate money offering this service if they weren't so greedy!

They recently sent me a letter offering to make a settlement for about 1/2 the amount I supposedly owe them, I tore it up.

I'm not paying them anything more, ever.

Standingfirm

Canterbury, Connecticut

U.S.A.