The following is an actual letter I sent to the customer service department at a major credit card company in 2003. I had a credit card back in the summer of 2002 and never used the damn thing. To this day I still don’t know what made me sign up for it. But after about a month, I started getting billed for something I never purchased. So stupid me, I refused to pay it. After a few months I started getting harassing phone calls and letters about how much money I owed the company. I still haven’t paid the bill to be honest with you. I’m not going to pay for something I didn’t buy. After about two years of collection agency harassment, I sent the following letter: Dear Credit Card Company (rhymes with lapital none), Hello. My name is Brandon J. Mendelson, and allegedly I am a customer of your company. You see, like most other college students that your company and others like you covet, you succeeded in brainwashing me, and many others into getting a credit card. I got mine during the summer of 2002 when I was encouraged to “start building my credit.” The card never once left my pocket, but somehow I started receiving a bill saying the card was used to purchase something online. Since I never used the card, I promptly threw your bill and the card in the trash where your company belongs. I refuse to pay for something I know nothing about. Sadly, your company, in its relentless pursuit of controlling the adult population by offering gimmicks and putting them in debt, has continued sending me bill after bill, and has spent the past two years calling my home with nasty, harassing, and abusive messages. It is against the law in accordance with the Fair Debt Collection Act, especially for a “debt collector”; to harass anyone, let alone a supposed customer such as myself. I can see quality customer service is something you really strive for. Here is the transcript of a conversation between one of your collection agencies and my Dad
Agent: Hello, can I speak with Brandon Mendelson? Brandon’s Dad: No, I’m sorry but he is away at school. Agent: I don’t believe you. Where are you hiding him? Dad: Excuse me? Agent: Is he in the witness protection program? Where is he? I demand to speak with him! Dad: hangs up the phone Still your company persists and have even inflated how much I “owe” you over the past two years. What was supposedly a $20 purchase and bill has morphed into a $758 bill that you now have a third collection agency calling my house six times a day to collect. I even have a sparkling new letter I got in the mail today from your collection agency asking for immediate payment of the full amount. This letter comes immediately following a conversation I had with your collection agent that went exactly like this: “Hi, I’m returning your phone call. You know, the one where you threatened arbitration against me? Well, I have thought about it and decided that I’ll pay you the $20 that was allegedly spent. That is how much the bill came out to. I can’t afford anymore than that because I’m broke and have no money to speak of. And I won’t be seeing any money soon because I work on a daily website, and we all know what kind of black hole those things can be. So if this is not acceptable please go ahead and file arbitration as you said you would. I invite you to go ahead and lose three times the amount you’re trying to extract from me in legal fees.” “I’ve even thought of changing my phone number just to aggravate your flunkeys as you continue on your pathetic need to extract chump change from a broke college student. As it is, I won’t be home 9 months out of this coming year, so don’t bother sending me any more mail because I won’t get it. Want my new address? How about I send it to you if you agree to allow me to hook your company’s president’s genitals to a car battery. You still won’t get any money from me, but this way I can get more threatening letters from you. Maybe then you’ll realize the financial hardship you have created for the citizens of this world.
If I continue hearing from your company I may consider legal action against you. The kind of long, agonizing legal action that will create bad publicity for you and thousands of dollars in court fees. I don’t know how I will pay for my lawyer, but putting myself in real debt would be worth it to see you corporate scumbags get what you deserve. I also urge all of my website viewers to rip up their credit cards and boycott your company. I’m also including in this email an mp3 of Tom Jones’s cover of I who have nothing for you to enjoy. Feel free to listen to it anytime you feel down about not being able to get blood from a stone. I thank you for pissing me off enough to write this letter to you today. And for hopefully sparking a revolution that will end our chains of debt and put corporations like yours in bankruptcy.. **Updated on 8.18.04* The guy from the collection agency, who has been calling me for two years now, calls me this morning and says “What can we do to help you take care of your bill?” I say to him, “well, I’ll pay you twenty dollars which is the amount charged to the card, and then that’s it.” He pauses and says “Well I’m sorry but we can’t do that.” And then I laugh and say “that’s all you’rr getting” *click. I’ll keep you posted. 4.10.05- I keep getting letters, so I notified the debt collectors that under the Fair Debt Collection Law, I can request that they no longer contact me. I haven’t heard from them since. 2.5.06- Still haven’t heard from these guys. I want to take a moment and recommend to everyone that they should take the envelopes sent to them by the credit card company, stuff the free America Online CDs into the envelopes, and send it back to the credit card company.
