Have you ever been badly ripped off?

In My Humble Opinion
41

Right before I started law school, the school called to inform me that I couldn’t take out any student loans because my credit report showed I was in collections for a debt owed to J.C. Penney’s (a department store). Since the student loans were the only thing I could use to pay my tuition, and were also going to pay a chunk of my living expenses, it seemed an important issue to clear up.

I asked the school what I needed to do; they told me I needed to clear that problem off of my credit report. I called the credit reporting agency; they told me that to clear it off of my credit report, I could either resolve the dispute with Penney’s or I could dispute the charge. How long will it take to dispute the charge? Well, they said, it could take months depending on what documentation you submit and what Penney’s response is.

I don’t have months; I have a week or so before school starts and I have to have that loan! So I called Penney’s; they agreed that it could take months to resolve, particularly when I told them I didn’t have any paperwork to submit to show that I had paid the purported debt. Why didn’t I have any proof of payment?

Because I have never shopped there, I never charged anything there, I never opened a Penney’s charge card.

Nevertheless, the nice man at Penney’s said, I’d have to show proof of payment to resolve it. So I took the coward’s way out and paid the $189. And I went to law school, and took out much, much debt, an amount that dwarfs the $189. I do not resent my student loans, however, because I believe I got significant value for the money I am paying back (and will be paying back for quite some time). But I do not like Penney’s. No, sir, I do not.

42

Yes and by a dear friend. He had been a friend of the family for years. He had been a friend of my brothers and when my brother died he still remained a good friend of the family. He was at my wedding. He was there the day my son was born. His daughter and mine are only two weeks apart. I was in the delivery room when his daughter was born.

We stayed in contact through out the years. And it always seemed like he showed up just when I needed him. He got in some trouble with the law and was locked up for awhile. I wrote to him and went to visit him twice while he was in jail.

After that he got his life together (so I thought) and we still remained in contact. One day he showed up and it was a week before his birthday. So we planned a little backyard BBQ for the next weekend. Food and drink were had and good times.

Two weeks after the birthday I got a call from my ex husband. He said the police had called him because the friend had been arrested and he has some ID’s that belonged to him. Well my ex figured out it was not his information that had been stolen but my son’s. I had to go to the police station and retrieve the items. He had stolen my son’s SS card and his medical card. He then used those to get a grocery store card, library card and a prepaid phone. He was literally trying to create a new identity using my son’s information. He had also signed his SS card. My son had not signed it yet as I didn’t feel he was old enough at the time.

The library card had an issue date in April which meant when he came to the Birthday BBQ in June he had already stolen the SS card two months earlier.

I was able to contact the grocery and the library and have the cards cancelled. I also had a credit check done on my son’s SS number to verify that he had not opened any accounts.

There were items missing from my house that I noticed after the fact. My husbands leather vest and my jean jacket came up missing. I can only assume he stole them as well to sell or trade.

I have not spoken or heard from him since the day he left after his birthday and I hope I never do.

43

About a year ago, I owned a small software company with my wife. Over the years we’ve been very successful at making great products and winning big awards, but never very good at selling our stuff. Around November of the year before, sales were down due to the economy, we had downsized from twelve employees to seven, and were looking for strategies to ride out the bad times. Then, out of the blue, a knight in shining armor appeared. He had read an article about us in a local newspaper and wanted to help us out. He was a retired sales exec and had worked for several very big software companies. We were immediately impressed with his ideas, and strategies for increasing our sales, and we agreed to let him help us, paying him solely on commission.

Within a month, he had two possible sales lined up, each around a million dollars. He had talked to the companies, he had visited their head offices (we had paid his expenses) and we’d had conference calls with them, they were enthusiastic. To go forward, we needed a detailed proposal for each and a working prototype for one of them, so we dropped everything else, and poured everything wee had into supporting these sales. In total, we probably poured about 11 person-months into supporting these sales. They looked promising enough that we decided to abandon our other survival strategies in order to do our best to ensure these contracts. That is about when our new sales guy was arrested.

Apparently in 2001, he became a sales rep for a company in Boston, racked up several milllion in sales, and collected his $150,000 in commission before they discovered that he had faked everything, including a signed contract from the customer.

While he was in jail, awaiting arraignment, we started pulling the threads of these two contracts for us. It turns out that both of these were completely bogus too. We still haven’t figure out who we had the conference call with.

By this point though, it was too late to save the company. We had poured everything we had into supporting these imaginary contracts. We had to lay off all of our employees, and shut everything down.

What really gets to me, though, is that he didn’t have much to gain from us. We were struggling when he came to us, we couldn’t pay his commision until the cheques cleared, even if we’d wanted to. He got maybe $2500 in travel expenses out of us, but we know he went on those trips so he couldn’t have kept that cash. Yet he put us in the position of wasting $50,000 in salaries to support fake contracts. One of our employees had to repeatedly change plans for his wedding to working in the changing timeline of this imaginary contract.

44

Glad to be of assistance :slight_smile:

45

MrFantsyPants wins.

I am scared sh*tless by his story. Mostly because I also have a small software company. Everyone else has sad stories too but…this one makes me weep uncontrolably (i’m ok now).

46

Twice.

The first time was bad. This was in 1994. To make a long story short, I was moving and decided to store my stuff at my Grandmothers house for a couple weeks(it’s a long story). One night I went over to pick up a couple things. I got there around 11 PM and all the lights were on and the front door was open (though the screen door was shut) This was very strange as Gram always had the house locked up when the sun fell. It turns out that my Gram had passed away earlier that day in the backyard while doing yard work. I had called my Dad and we found her at about the same time. We called the paramdeics but it was way too late.

I stayed at my parent house that night.

The next day we went back to my Grams house and found that someone broke in and stole just about everything. All my guitar stuff (~3500), my Grams silver, jewelry, coin collection. Everything of real value was gone. So some bastard realized my Grandmother had died and figured it was a good time to rip off her stuff. No one was ever caught. The really bad thing was we later found a list of the things she wanted each grandkid to have. Going through the list and marking off what had been stolen was really painful and sad.
Macy’s.

I went into Macy’s to buy 2 shirts because they were on sale. Note, I never shop at Macy’s. I believe that this was the first time I ever bought anything there.

So I went up to the counter to purchase the shirts. The guy behind the counter asked if I wanted to apply for a Macy’s credit card. I declined. I handed him my Visa. He asked for my license. It seemed to take him a long time to ring up the purchase but I wasn’t really paying attention. The total for 2 shirts was $35.

Fast forward 2 months. I get a call from Macy’s. The person on the phone states that I am late on my Macy’s credit card payment and that the balance is now $100. I tell her that I never signed up for a Macy’s card, never recieved a bill and don’t know what she is talking about. She tells me a bill was sent to <insert address here>. The address the bill was sent to was the address on my drivers license, not my mailing address. Apparently the clerk signed me up for a Macy’s card. At that point I got extremely angry and demanded her supervisor. I explained to the supevisor that I never signed up for a Macy’s card. He said that I signed up for one in the store. I said that I never did then asked him HOW MUCH the clerk got for each person that he signed up for a credit card. The supervisor declined to answer and told me he would waive the extra fees, that the total was $35. I got the address to send in the bill and mailed in a check with an angry letter stating that I wanted the account closed.

Fast forward to last week. I got another call, this time from the bank that issued the card. This guy wanted to know why I hadn’t paid off the Macy’s charge account and that the balance was now ~$200( remember, this is for 35 worth of shirts). I explained that I sent in a check and went through the whole deal. He said that they never recieved the check. I asked him if they got the letter asking for the account to be closed. He said they recieved the letter. I then explained to him that the check was mailed with the letter. Then I went ape shit. Three supervisors later I got an apology, got the total amount owed down to original $35, if my check actually has not cleared (I haven’t had time to call the bank yet, I’ve been sick). I told the guy I would pay with my credit card. He said that wasn’t possible, that I had to mail in a check. I then asked for the account number so I could put it on the check. He then told me that for security reasons he could not give me the account number (Funny, you’d think that for securiy reasons they would need your permission to open a credit card in your name). At that point I got extremely mad. I spoke to his supervisor, who did not enjoy the conversation. But I got the amount down to the original $35 and they are mailing out a bill and the account is closed

Then I wrote a detailed letter to the state AG and copied everyone I else I could think of.

Then I wrote a detailed letter to Macy’s HQ stating what happened and that I would never shop at any of Federated Stores (the company that owns Macy’s)

I am going to pay the bill as soon as I get it. I am also going to follow up on my complaint to the state AG. And if this shows up on my credit report I amd going to go nuclear.

Slee

47

I agree, Mr. FantsyPants Wins.
God does that suck. May that shyster get burned, bled and beaten one day for his heinous crimes.

48

The JC Penney’s story reminded me:

Several years ago I decided it might be a good idea to actually establish a credit history. I wanted to buy a car (my first), and needed a co-signer because up until that point I was what the finance lady at the used car lot called a “ghost” with no record that I even existed as far as the credit bureau’s were concerned, despite having rented apartments, having utility bills and a cell phone all in my own name.

Shortly afterward I went into JC Penney to purchase some clothes for a new job. I don’t normally shop at such places, but the store was conveniently located and carried just what I needed for decent prices.

At the checkout, where I was entirely set to pay for my purchase flat out, the cashier asked if I had a JC Penney credit card. Telling him no, he offered that it would take about 2 minutes to apply and that I’d save 20% if I did. Figuring it would be good to have, I agreed to it and was actually surprised when his estimate of 2 minutes was actually correct, and even more so when I was approved.

Now, I’m typically very good about bills and debt. The reason I’ve never needed a credit card or any type of credit is because I’m not a frivolous spender; I only buy what I need and what I can afford at the time. However, I do have a bad habit of waiting until the last minute to pay. In my younger days I worked at several companies that required monthly or quarterly payments from customers, and each of those places typically allow about a week of leeway on payments to account for slow mail and whatnot.

I found out that JC Penney, however, does not. My first payment (I’d decided to pay the minimum for a few months thinking it might help my credit to show that I pay over time; the rationale being that more companies would want me because they’d think they could earn more in interest off of me) was one day past due when they cashed the check, and they charged me a $20 late charge.

The next month I purposefully mailed the check a week before it was due, and again, it was not cashed until one day after the due date, and they again charged me a $20 late charge.

I called their customer service but could find no one to explain. They maintained that they didn’t receive the check until the day it was cashed.

I gave it one more attempt, again mailing my payment early, and again they charged me $20 as a late fee. So, in three months, I managed to rack up as much in late charges and interest as I originally owed. No one at their 800# would help me, so I ended up going into the store and reluctantly and grudgingly paying off the bill in full right at the cashier.

49

Most likely the earlier appraisal way overvalued the house, and the current appraisal is closer to market. In which case, there should be little effect on your refinance requirements. It does mean that you probably overpaid for the house in the first place, but as consolation, the overpaid amount will feel less significant over time as your house gains value from inflation. But I can see the argument for the earlier appraisal – after all, the value of the house is ultimately what someone is willing to pay for it, and you did offer $10,000 over the appraised value at that time.

50

Well, he is facing up to 40 years in jail, so that is something.

51

I was not technically screwed over, but never buy anything for your cat. Those cat catalogs should come with a warning label.

The catalog should have made clear that cats are extremely stubborn, will snub practically anything they don’t care for and don’t care about the price of any item that they refuse to use. My kitten refused to drink from the water filter I got him. He snubbed freaking water!

52

So . . .

Did I win?

53

The Irony. It burns…

54

It wasn’t big bucks or in the badly category, but when I was ready to graduate from grad school, having complete a 5-year PhD program over 8 years (and having to enroll for at least 1 credit each semester), I was told that I had a book overdue for 4 years, and I could not graduate without settling this fee. Interestingly, the book was on Fluid Dynamics (and I was in a psychology program) and was signed out by someone who wrote my name, but the signature did not match mine on my ID card. Nothing could budge the rule-makers and I had to pay for the cost of the book, which was about $70 or so.

Like I said, not badly ripped-off, but I can still re-live the exasperation and futility of arguing with the University librarian… it may be the only time I publicly yelled at someone who was doing their job.

55

Need I say more than the following:

I pit me for being a fool

Life is harsh, and there are people that will take advantage of nice people. Live and learn and don’t beat yourself up too much, there are others waiting in line to do it for you.

56

hotels.com almost ripped me off. i had reserved a room through them one time. about six months later, there was a $350 charge on my credit card for hotels.com , and a phone number. i called the phone number on the bill several times without getting an answer so i called my credit card and did the whole “fraud charge” routine and thought that was the end of it.

months later, i got a collection notice from hotels.com for the $350. after several days (my wife literally spent HOURS every day on the phone) of phone calls to various supervisors in various departments and being on hold etc, we determined that the reservation in question was placed by a person who shared my name (but had a different middle initial) and that the hotels.com rep taking the reservation had simply charged their reservation to my card without confirming the address or credit card number.

even though they now knew that a different person stayed in the room, they still wanted me to pay for it. finally, some detective work got us past the dickhead supervisor to his supervisor and everything got straightened out.

57

The largest amount I’ve been ripped off was for $600. Which is quite a lot considering I was working part time at McDonalds at the time. I wanted to get out of my tiny apartment and rent a house.
I found a tiny cottage that had a lower rent than my apartment and the owners had just “remodeled” and turned it from a duplex to a single family house. Basicly they just tore down the joining wall and turned one kitchen into a laundry room.
But it had a large sunny yard, and visions of tomato plants were dancing in my head.
The previous renters had left their mark/s on the place. The owner needed a week to get it cleaned up, and $600 deposit. He also felt the need to send his wife over to my apartment to see how clean I was, so he wouldn’t get left with another mess.
The carpets were trashed, he said if he replaced them he’d have to raise the rent. But he could have them professionally cleaned. He had that done on a Friday, but didn’t return to the house until Monday. That same day, I wanted to see the house again and show it to my future MIL. We arrived and all the windows were up and the door wide open. The house had been closed up for 3 days immediately AFTER having the carpets steamed! :rolleyes:

The smell was horrible! The wallpaper was hanging in sheets. There was mold forming in the corners. In the kitchen where I thought the walls were painted beige, there were white and brown streaks where the gunk had loosened up and ran down the walls.

The owner showed up and we demanded the deposit back. He said he would have refunded if he hadn’t just had the carpets cleaned. :smack:

I had signed a contract and there wasn’t anything I could do.

58

Whatever happened with that?

59

About 5 thousand. Loaned my mother some money so she could build a garage in her backyard. She found a contractor thru her church. He was liscensed, insured, no complaints on BBB, etc… The estimate was something like 8 grand or so. Luckily my sister caught wind of this and suggested we pay him piecemeal (or whatever you call it.) He was against it at first but finally agreed. Make a long story short, he dug a hole, poured the concrete, we paid him 5 grand with the last 3 after the job was done, and he disappeared. We consult a lawyer and he files for bankruptcy. Turns out we weren’t the only ones swindled by him. There were 3 other people ahead of us and our lawyer suggested that we probably will never get any of our money back.

60

I dropped my cell phone in the toilet last year. I didn’t have insurance on it, so they (US Cellular) said that I would have to buy a new one because they didn’t have any loaner phones for me to use. I thought it was crap that I would either have to pay $150 for a new phone (the cheapest they had) or pay a phone bill that didn’t involve me making any calls.

So I found one on Ebay. The exact same kind, US Cellular and everything! $60 bucks. I was psyched. It got to my house - wait a second? It was a totally different phone, and it was pink, and it was PC Metro, not US Cellular. I tried to get the money back, but he refused. Eventually, about two months later, he sent me back thirty bucks. I still have the phone that I can’t even use. It sucked.

Oh, and last week I hit a deer. That was a $1500 dollar ripoff. Liability only, not the way to go.