Stupid Patriot Act. And even worse CC companies.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Apparently, due to the Patriot Act, you cannot apply for a credit card with a PO Box as your mailing address. How this protects me from mad bombers I don’t know.

Even stupider credit card companies –

So, we are told that we should apply over the phone with our physical address, then call the next day to change it to our PO Box. What a fine secure system. It’s fool proof I tell’s ya.

So where’s our CC, our rebate, and our statement? Oh, returned 3 times marked as undeliverable you say. Well that’s because you didn’t change our address as we requested when we called. We do NOT get mail delivered to our house. It’s not a choice, we aren’t being eccentric. That’s the way it is. There are no mailboxes, no mailmen no cute little white jeeps. Nada, none. Mail is not home delivered in this area.

You say you have our PO Box as the mailing address? Bull. Then why was it undeliverable 3 times. Listen, I certainly don’t know all the ins and outs of your database, but somewhere it’s still looking at our old address. Fix it.

This is now the third time this has happened. They can’t seem to be convinced that we do not get mail delivered to our house and try to do it anyway.

2

enipla - Well before there was a Patriot Act or even any notion that America could be vulnerable to terrorist, I worked for a couple companies that didn’t allow people to use a P.O. Box when they applied for an account. One reason was, that they often score these aps on specific criteria - do you own a home? Yes? 5 points. Do you rent? 3 points. Do you live with a friend? 1 point. If you claimed to own a home, they want a home address. Also, if they’re running a credit report they need to be able to verify your address. And if they ever needed to repossess something, they certainly needed to know where your physical location was.

The fact that they can’t manage to change your billing address is another story altogether.

StG

3

That’s sort of what I figured. But I have been told again and again that it’s because of the Patriot Act. They want to know that you actually live in the house where you claim. And I don’t think they want to change the address over the phone. They would prefer you mail in a change of address that would come with the bill.

Fine. Don’t want my business? Tell me first. But guess what, we have put $3000 of appliances on that account and we want to PAY YOU.

4

Back when I lived in a P.O.-box-only area, I used a 4-line address:
<name>
<street address>
<P.O. box #>
<City, state, zip>

That way those who need your physical address have it, and the post office has your box number as well.

5

Stupid American companies honestly think everyone lives in the US. I have run-ins with at least once a month.

6

I run a GIS database as well as handle a County Assessor dept. DB. We simply have entrys for both physical and mailing addresses. I’m sure it’s common, think about how many vacation homes there are.

In any case, to complicate things further, we do not live in an incorporated area, the ‘town’ that is closest to us that we would use for our physical address is not the town where our PO Box is. It’s not even in the same county. (missed it by about 1/2 mile).

Not sure why they can’t seem to change our mailing address. The person we talk to on the phone says the POB is in the database. I think it’s just not propogating out to all the correct tables or databases.

7

While I’m certainly no fan of the Patriot Act, assigning blame to if for CC companies requiring a physical address on apps is a bit misguided. I applied for my first card in 1990 and had to use my physical address. Only after I was accepted was I able to switch to my P.O. box for my CC bills.

8

If the Patriot Act makes it illegal to apply for a credit card through a PO Box I wish to hell that the credit card companies would stop sending solicitations to my PO box.

9

Yep, we where accepted right there in the store on the spot. We had to use our physical address to get accepted, Sears. I could care less if they want our physical address, just stop trying to mail shit there. We won’t get it.

We had two major appliance go tits up at once so we decided to do the whole shebang.

We now have $3000 dollars of their merchandise (interest free for a year) but they can’t send us a bill because they can’t get our mailing address right in their database (called them three times now).

Up the ladder we go.

10

Is there a way for them to switch you to paperless billing? Then you just get your statements via email or a notification to go their website and download them.

11

Maybe, but I’m not entirely confident that if they can’t get something as simple as our address right, I want to trust them over the net.

And I really don’t want to try to set that up at this point. We just want to pay it off in a few months.

The account was set up over the phone by the OWNER of the store. He HAD to use our physical address to do it.

I’m being a bit of a grouch. This has happened before. I understand that this is an unusual situation, and that the rules and restrictions for lending are far more complex than I understand. My understanding is that the Patriot act will not allow you to apply for a credit card over the phone or net with a POB. We HAVE a physical address, we just can’t get mail here.

Three creditors have told us that we can’t apply over the phone or the net because our mailing address is a POB. Because of the Patriot Act.

But then, when you are told that all you have to do is call the next day and change your mailing address I have to question a few things.

1-Whats the point then. It sounds like that’s the way creditors get around this.

2-If they need my physical address too (I can understand that), why isn’t their database set up to handle that? I suspect it almost certainly is. I bet a lot of people have their bills sent to a business, or second home, relative, whatever.

3-It’s the POB thing I’m pretty sure. But what’s the point if you are supposed to be able to change it from a physical address to a POB the next day? We where already approved at the store, so any checking on what our physical address is (which I really realy doubt was done on the credit check) is over.

Or perhaps, we are just getting really bad customer service reps at the credit dept. I talked to my Wife today after I started this thread. She did go by our POB. We received the rebate, but no statement or CC. So maybe, this is starting to funnel through their system, (remembering that it was undeliverable before [after we had changed our address to our POB]).

At this point, we don’t even know our account number. It has to be mailed to us. So every time we call, we have to go through the phone tree and a big explanation. I guess that’s another reason I’m a bit grouchy about this.

That and who knows where those credit cards are going. So until they can get their system figured out, we have to keep a very close eye on this. Through the phone tree to get a person.

If we don’t have a statement and CC in two days, We’ll call again.

It also pisses me off professionally because I design DB’s that handle addressing. My group assigns new addresses for the county that I work for. I understand address problems. This should not be a big deal.

12

You may also want to check if you can make payments directly through their website (I know, I know, but in the end the goal is timely payments, right?). If you know when your payment is due, you can just make the payment whether or not you’ve gotten their statement.

This is how I make my cc payments to Wells Fargo, AT&T, and Shell. I don’t ever wait to get the statement and then send it in via snail mail. I’ve never ever had a problem. Just sayin’.

As for the whole cluster… uh… lovemaking? that led to this situation, yeah that’s ridiculous. Your rant is righteous.

13

Payments aren’t due for 10 months. And to whom can I make them? I won’t be able to set up an online account without an account number. They won’t give us our account number over the phone. We don’t know what it is. We never got one. I’m not going to start sending them money with out that. The account number has to be mailed to us. But it seems that they won’t mail it to a PO Box.

Though they say they now have the right mailing address (their DB is screwed up, I am almost sure). Mail is being returned to them. Three times. Two more days… And some more phone calls.

It’s nuts.

We do have $3000 of appliances though.

Heh. Payment is not due for about 10 months now. One year no interest. I am not going to let them call me 10 months from now and say… by the way, that will be 25% interest.

14

YOU think the Patriot Act sucks, try working for a financial institution. We’re the ones who had to lay out the money in order to comply, and we’re the ones who get fined if we mess it up.

I can’t really speak to the CC companies, as I’m not on that side of it, but we are required to “Know Your Customer” (KYC) which is why we have a “Customer Information Program” (CIP)… It’s kind of a pain in the butt, but we have to comply or face fines. In fact, not just comply, but interpret the regulations as there really hasn’t been a clear opinon regarding exactly WHAT it is we’re supposed to be doing!

For example, google “American Express Bank” together with “$65,000,000” (yes, million) for a fun story.

15

Different side of the same coin.

Just today I had a fellow come into my office that had a problem because his one property has two addresses (one from the alley, one from the main street). He’s trying to pay escrow on the additonal house he built on the property (no lot split) and the mortgage company will not apply it to the loan he got to build the house because the property has more than one address.

They where happy to give him the loan to build it though.