Kevin's Weblog

Can someone explain to me exactly what it is that credit card companies mean by “close an account”? Because it clearly isn’t what I mean by that phrase. I’ve closed three or four credit card accounts in my life and they all still appear as active on my credit report. Furthermore, in all cases, charges have continued to show up on the accounts after they were supposedly closed. Usually this is things like regular bill payments, but in two cases they were fraudulent charges.

Yesterday I came home and found a letter claiming that my Sears card, which I haven’t used in 7 years and which I canceled nearly two years ago, had a $55 balance that had been sent to collections for non-payment. The number of things wrong with this is just amazing. First, the account is closed. Second, this is the first I’ve heard of it, despite the charge in question getting made back in May. But it gets worse. They claim that in April, a $9000 payment was made to the account to cover the balance at that time! At this point, I’m starting to suspect that their database has gotten corrupted somehow. Fun.

The phone conversation started out really interesting. The letter didn’t actually include the account number. So it took a couple minutes of going around in circles before I could get them to even start dealing with the problem. “I have a letter from you claiming I owe money on an account that’s been closed for 2 years.” “What’s the account number?” “I don’t know, I closed the account 2 years ago.” “Well, I need to know the account number to help you.” “So, what am I supposed to do about this letter?” “What’s the account number?” ...