What Sears Does Not Tell You When You Apply For A Credit Card

I was waiting to hear back from the U.S. Comptroller Of The Currency before writing this blogpost. I filed a formal complaint against Citibank South Dakota and Sears in January and Febuary 2009. Gee those people at the Comptroller of the Currency really work fast don't they? Four months to answer a complaint....Wow.

Anyway, I'll try to be as brief as possible while still giving you all of the facts which is more than I can say for my friends at Citibank South Dakota NA and Sears. On December 26, 2008 I went to the Sears retail location in Milford, CT because I needed some essentials and because they always have their best sale the day after Christmas.

I selected my items and proceeded to go to the cashier to pay with my debit card. I do not use retail chain credit cards; I prefer to pay in cash. In the process of paying for my merchandise the woman who was handling my transaction asked me if I wished to apply for a "Sears" credit card. I replied negatively stating that I already had enough credit cards and did not need another one. She then added that I applied I would get another 15% off of my purchase. So I said to myself, "Hey what the hell, I'll get the card and then cut it up but still get the discount here and now". So I told her to go ahead since the discount came to about another $15.00 off of my purchase.

She asked me for my drivers license and social security number. The register then printed out what I though would be the approval of my credit application. To my surprise the lady told me that I would be receiving a letter in the mail and that if I wished to know why I was denied credit that I could call the toll free number which she gave me on the register receipt.

Let us just say that I was standing there in amazement. Coincidentally, just days before I had pulled my Equifax credit report. It had negative information or late pays on it. It was triple A. I also knew that my FICO score was well above 700. So you can see why I may have been very astounded to be denied credit by a "department store".

Upon arriving home I called the toll free number which was answered by Citibank South Dakota NA. I was informed that the reason I was denied credit was because of "an unsatisfactory payment history on an existing account" and that the source of the information was Equifax. The problem is and was that no such information about my credit existed within Equifax's databases. Please hold the term existing account in your memory banks because it will become very important as this story unfolds.

You might say upon hearing this erroneous information regarding why my credit application was denied that I was basically highly agitated, i.e., major league pissed off!. On Saturday morning, December 27, 2008, I called Equifax and was assured by a manager there that no such negative information existed about me within their records. I have in my possession a letter from Equifax which explicitly states this fact.

Talk about going ballistic, I was ready to fire my cruise missiles and Citibank South Dakota and Sears. To compound my angst and frustration I had 3 banking relationships with Citibank, NA and was given a very generous line of credit in one of the accounts 5 months or so prior to receiving the Sears declination.

There is a big distinction between Citibank, NA South Dakota and Citibank, N.A. Please do not confuse the two. The entity with the designation of South Dakota offers credit card services as opposed to the corporate, investment and retail banking activities of Citibank, NA.

After my conversation on Saturday, December 27 with Equifax, I called Citibank, South Dakota, NA. This is when all the fun really started. I had the distinct displeasure of speaking to a Mr. Davis and was treated to some of most rude, arrogant and obnoxious behavior. This individual was enjoying playing God on my dime. He was condescending and spoke to me as though I was some kind of "deadbeat". His attitude was that the credit application was denied and it was basically too bad if I found fault with Citibank South Dakota's credit approval procedures.

I called back Citibank South Dakota, NA and asked for Mr. Davis' supervisor. I was connected to a Ms. Shays who was just the opposite of Mr. Davis. She was factual, helpful and understanding. At this point the situation really started to become interesting.

The bottom line here is the convenient use and definition of terms employed by Sears/Citibank. It should be noted that the people with whom I was conversing at the Citibank location in South Dakota were all former Sears employees.

Remember the term "existing account" mentioned herein? The Sears/Citibank definition of existing account can mean any account that a person has or has had even if said account was closed 20 years ago!! What do you think about that? This was explained to me by Ms. Shays. It so happens that I did have an account with Sears in 1993 and that I did include the account in a bankruptcy which was filed 16 years ago. This is and was the existing account to which they were referring. How's them for apples?

What was revealed to me within days of my conversation with Mr. Davis by his Manager, Ms. Shays was that within a year and some months prior to my making a solicited credit application to Sears that the Sears credit card operations were sold to Citibank, South Dakota, NA.

So in my opinion what we have here is the rather elastic and make it what you will use of the term "existing account" by the former employees of Sears who now work for Citibank South Dakota, NA. The problem is that Citibank and Citibank South Dakota, NA never had any problem with giving me credit. Doesn't it appear as if one hand does not know what the other is doing here?

Most people believe and are sure that under the Fair Credit Reporting Act tha negative information with the exclusion of bankruptcies must be removed from all of your credit reports after 7 years plus 180 days have passed. So if you go to apply for credit after the 7 1/2 years you would assume that all negative information which may have appeared about you before that time clock started ticking would be gone. That is true and accurate. What does not go away is internal records which businesses have about you and which may be as old as 20, 30 or 40 years.

This is the information which Sears Citibank was using. The only problem in my opinion is that although they have the legal right to use internal information that they must be legally bound to disclose to a prospective credit applicant that their are utilizing said information prior to the credit application being signed not after it is signed.

The other issue is how evasive and obfuscatory they were about finally disclosing the real reason for the decision not to give me a Sears credit card. I am going to share with you the exact wording in the Sears credit application the hard copy of which was given to me by the cashier after I applied for credit not before.

The pertinent language is as follows:

"Personal Information We Collect and May Disclose

The personal information we collect about you comes from the following sources:

• Information we receive from you, such as your name,address,and telephone number,
• Information about your transactions,such as your account balances,payment history, and account activity and
• Information we receive from consumer reporting agencies and other sources, such as your credit bureau reports and other information relating to your creditworthiness.

we may disclose any of the above information that we collect to affiliates and nonaffiliated third parties as described below.

The term "personal information," as used in this notice, means information that identifies you personally.We may use information which does not personally identify you to help manage our businesses and to provide us, our affiliates, and other companies insight into consumer spending behavior. We may do htis even if you ask us to limit disclosure of personal information about, as described in the Privacy Choices Form that you receive with your credit card."

I apologize for the wordiness of the relevant language but as you can see there is no reference to what Sears specifically uses to make a credit determination. The Fair Credit Reporting Act does not cover what business can and cannot do with their internal records. Upon first glance I found the language they use to be evasive, misleading and very non specific.

So what is my object in sharing all of this with you? In January of this year I shared my entire file with the CT Attorney General's Office, the Head of the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Chris Dodd and the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency. My goal is to have the Fair Credit Reporting Act amended to encompass what I view in the case presented here as being one of another way to abuse consumers. Surely 999 out of 1000 people applying for credit at Sears would never think that accounts they had 15,20 or 30 years ago would be taken account when decisions were to be made on their credit applications.

When you are denied credit it negatively impacts your FICO score. For some people this could be very harmful to their financial health. Stay tuned for to read about the Sears/Citibank written response, what the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Senator Christopher Dodd have done to be helpful (NOT).