Dear Mr. Haller: I certainly appreciate all your faxes, over-night letters and the cooperation and help I received from you, Mr. G. Butch Yates (Ombudsman), Mr. D. Paul Jones (CEO), Mr. Jerry W. Powell (General Counsel / Secretary Compass Bancshares), Mr. B. Shane Clanton, (Attorney, Alabama), Mr. Rick Woznicki. The number of above-named individuals transfixed me, and I “guesstimated” that there must be over 92 years of education combined amongst all of you. I am overwhelmed to be in such esteemed company. Nevertheless, I am troubled. During all your discussions, perusing my letters and faxes, researching the problem, high-fives, slaps on the back, and accolades on your forceful and pedantic diatribes, what puzzles me most is that you feel Compass only made a “slight error” with regards to my account. If memory serves me correctly, several of you had to be successful on a portion of the LSAT called “logic games”. Logic games relates to analytical reasoning which should come into play, with this esteemed group, when a cardholder raises a complaint regarding their bill—especially when it appears that Compass is at fault. In logic, one presents an argument in an attempt to demonstrate the truth of an assertion based on a set of premises. If I understand this definition, it is my duty to show the process of my premises and shape my argument. My premise is I made Compass aware in January 2006, after receiving a collection notice saying Compass did not receive my January 2006 payment, that not only did Compass receive the payment, but also they cashed my check. I contacted Compass by telephone, they requested I fax them verification of payment, I did this, and Compass never responded. I called Compass the next day when I heard nothing from them, and was told Compass never had a record of my first telephone call, or my fax. I again sent a copy of my payment and verification that the first fax went through, and requested that they contact me when they received the fax. I heard nothing. I contacted my bank, they advised that Compass cashed the check January 3, 2006 and Washington Mutual got involved as the payment was an automatic deduction and paid on my bank's website. Washington Mutual contacted Compass, got their mailing address, sent Compass a letter and copy of the cancelled check and furnished me copies of this transaction. Neither my bank nor I heard anything from Compass. In March 2006, I sent my first certified, return receipt requested letter to the Collection Department with copies of all correspondence sent to Compass by my bank and me since January 2006, and requested they contact me. While I received a signed receipt that Compass' collection department received these instruments, I heard nothing. I began getting over fourteen calls per day from the collection department and answered their calls. I advised that I sent all documentation to them and their answer was “we never got the correspondence, and if you would only pay your bills on time, no one would have to call”. I re-sent all documents from the first certified letter, copies of the signed receipt and sent this second letter certified, returned receipt requested and asked someone to contact me. I heard nothing from Compass. I sent a Cease and Desist letter stating that if they felt no need to contact me after getting letters for over three months, I did not want them calling and leaving over fourteen messages per day. They actually got this letter as the calls ceased. I got an email from a Compass employee telling me to contact her so she could resolve the problem. I emailed her all documentation and she did nothing. In March 2006, I got a notice from my credit watch that Compass placed a “non-payment over 30-days” comment on my credit report. I also got letters from four other credit card companies that they raised my interest rate to 39.99% and were doubling my monthly payments due to this Compass remark on my credit report. I contacted Compass and was told my by a Compass representative that there were no notations on my account of any telephone calls, or certified letters, or emails regarding this account. There was only one notation about a Cease and Desist and again, I was told by a Compass employee that if I only paid my bill on time, Compass would not have to resort to these drastic measures At this time, in April 2006, I sent a letter to Mr. Jones, CEO, and you, Mr. Haller, regarding my account. I received a reply to this letter from you, Mr. Haller and from Mr. G. Butch Yates, Ombudsman for Mr. Jones. Both your letters advised that Compass was sorry for the mistakes, and Mr. Yates advised that he FOUND MY CHECK and applied it to my account in APRIL 2006. Mr. Yates further advised that he credited my account $49 for late fees and a portion of the interest payment. Your letter stated an apology and advised that Compass dealt with the matter in a satisfactory manner and has made me whole. I believe the premises stated that Compass did nothing to make me whole, and continue to do nothing to make me whole. Had compass intended to make me whole, and restore my account where it was in December 2005, you, Mr. Haller, and Mr. Yates would have done more than pay lip service to my problem. You, Mr. Haller, and Mr. Yates would have removed every single fee and interest increase back to December 2005. You, Mr. Haller and Mr. Yates would have drafted a letter I could present to every creditor advising that the mistake was yours. You would have requested that all penalties charged by these companies be removed from my account, and you would have notified all these companies that Compass took full responsibility for adding to my financial difficulties by causing other companies to raise my rates and double my payments. You, Mr. Haller and Mr. Yates would have provided, if requested, verbal confirmation or a number to contact you if these companies had any questions. However, you, Mr. Haller and Mr. Yates took the easy way out. You did little more than treat my problem as an annoyance and swatted me away as you would a bothersome gnat. You sent pompous letters stating that Compass did everything it could, and that you were sorry for the problem, but you and Compass believe that nothing you will ever do will satisfy me. This is not a problem I created, Mr. Haller; it is a problem created by Compass. This is a problem that would have resolved itself had Compass responded to any fax, letter, telephone call my bank and I made beginning January 2006. As I have stated repeatedly, Compass is concerned with being right, not with resolving this issue. Neither would you, Mr. Haller or Mr. Yates et al tolerate the level of service given me by Compass. Not one person in copied group would tolerate anyone charging them penalties for something they did not create. None of you would permit penalties charged by other companies for an issue you did not create, and why you feel I need to roll over and die at the mere mention of your title and status, Mr. Haller, is beyond me. I know as an attorney, you and the rest of the copied individuals would identify yourselves as attorneys, send letters threatening legal action if all items were not immediately removed from your account. You would further threaten to file an action if the offending company did not remedy this wrong by notifying every company affected by this mistake, and doing everything possible to rectify the wrong. I know you would do this by the tone and demeanor of your letters, Mr. Yates' ignoring my emails, and the language and haughtiness of every Compass employee. As you can see from my current statement, Compass is demanding a minimum payment of over $800. Imagine that amount being charged by the other five credit card companies who believed the negative comment by Compass, and you can understand the financial ruin you placed on me. If you consider this $800+ demand by Compass as “making me whole”, your definition of made whole must be based on your salary versus my salary I believe my truthfulness and honest process to get Compass to recognize their mistake, shapes and validates my argument that Compass failed in its duty to protect my account and me from a financial nightmare. Logic requires a thought process to determine logical from flawed arguments. Your argument on Compass' behalf that Compass did and has made me whole, lies in your desire to believe what is convenient regardless of the falsehood of that belief. You, Mr. Haller, contend and believe that “Compass made the effort to make me whole, and it is now my turn to uphold my promise to repay the amounts borrowed”. You, Mr. Haller, base this belief by reiterating that Mr. Yates found the check in APRIL 2006, and credited my account for this amount as well as late fees, interest overcharges, and notations on my credit record in APRIL 2006”. You compound the falsehood that I was made whole by responding, “When the credit was issued to your account for that payment in APRIL 2006, the $116 overdue amount ceased to carry forward on any further bills”. The logical reasoning of both your conclusions and that of Mr. Yates' that Compass made me whole astounds me. The mere fact that you regard Compass' handling of this matter over the past eight months as making me whole is impertinent. The mere fact that you and Mr. Yates laud each other's tenacity in handling this matter is pathetic. I put this cancelled check in the hands of everyone within Compass, remotely responsible for my account over an eight-month period, and now you and Mr. Yates want to sing the halleluiah chorus at your astute handling of this process? In evaluating my argument, you and your colleagues needed to consider separately the fact of my statements and to see if it was true in every evaluation. I stated I paid my account on December 2005. I stated and proved that Compass received the check and cashed this check on January 2006. I stated that I corresponded with Compass via fax and proved that truth by providing copies of the faxes along with received receipts. I stated that I kept receiving collection notices and provided copies of those notices along with copies of my cancelled checks to Compass month after month. I stated that I sent numerous letters to Compass with documentation, provided receipts of delivery with every letter and Compass still did nothing. I wrote month after month when I discovered that Compass placed a notation of non-payment to my credit report which triggered all my other credit card accounts to increase my interest payments to over 39.99% and double my payments, and Compass did nothing. To-date, by way of this letter, I am still providing this colloquy and Compass still does nothing. All these, Mr. Haller, are facts and they are true in every evaluation. Compass had a fiduciary duty to apply my misappropriated payment to the correct month. Compass did not do this. By your own words and the words of Mr. Yates, instead of applying the payments to the January 2006 statement date, you applied the payment to April 2006. By not applying it to the correct date and allowing over four months to lapse from when I contacted Compass to April 2006, I incurred fees, a negative balance of $116, a notation on my credit report and double payments. To suggest that in April 2006 by your applying $116 to my account erased all negatives from my credit file is ludicrous. Mr. Yates advised that I received $49 in late fees for APRIL. He did not reimburse me for the fees, which began in January 2006. For you to suggest that Compass somehow is blameless in this fiasco is insulting. Compass breached their duty of making me whole. Compass breached their duty and fiduciary responsibility, and is still breaching their duty by not making me whole as of January 2006, and not Compass' date of choice, April 2006. Your efforts and Compass' efforts are nothing less than dismal. My argument is valid; the premises together entail the conclusion. I would be happy to open your argument of EFFORT to public examination and see if it has any public legitimacy. Had any of your staff done an accurate evaluation of my account, listed below, you would have known that fees, rising interest rates and payments increasing occurred in January 2006, and were not limited to April 2006. In Mr. Yates repaying only $49 in late fees for April 2006, you ignore the fees applied months prior to that. In applying a credit of $116 April 2006, you ignore the fact this “past due” amount was added to months January 2006, February 2006, March 2006 as well as April 2006 and increased my interest rate dramatically. If you will look at April 2006, you are repaying $151.53 to an account that had $116 added as a past due payment, over $166 in late fees, and the interest due went from $43.00 to $147.22. I am no math genius, but I certainly feel that you and Mr. Yates need to get acquainted with a credit account that carries a balance to understand that Mr. Yates' repayment of a mere $151.53 is unacceptable. However, it would have fallen to you, Mr. Haller, Mr. Yates, and the rest of your esteemed group to argument to determine that your premise of making me whole was groundless. . Payment Due Paid Past due Late Fees Over-limit Fees Interest Due 11/15/05 $113 $120 0 0 0 $43.00
12/15/05 $121 $120, $5 0 0 0 $43.43
01/15/06 $253 $120 $116 $39.00 0 $53.06
02/15/06 $271 $120 $133 $39.00 0 $61.90
03/15/06 $331 $240 $151 $39.00 0 $131.03
04/15/06 $261 $125 $261 $49.00 0 $147.22
Here is where Mr. Yates credited my account with $151.53-with all the fees, raised interest fees. I am not sure how he came up with this amount if he did his job and credited the payment back to the January 2006 statement date
05/15/06 $268 $120 $268 $49.00 0 $139.28
06/15/06 $555.74 $120 $143 $49.00 $35.00 $163.09
07/15/06 $816.84 I stopped paying $240 $49.00 $35.00 $163.32 To use your words, Mr. Haller, “the rates charged on my card do affect the payment on the outstanding balance”. I consider these charges outrageous. I consider your or any of the five men named on your correspondences inability or lack of concern to correct this mistake callous. I consider my time valuable. I am now adding my additional billable hours, to once again write a letter and do research, to the ones you previously received for payment in July 2006. • Hours spent dealing with this Compass from December 2005 to June 24, 2006 216 hours
• My billable rate is $21.63 x 40 hours (my current salary) $ 865.20
• Overtime-hourly rate- 1.5 times my salary of 21.63 $ 54.08
• Overtime hours – 176 x $54.08 $ 9,518.08 • Compass Bank owes me $ 10,383.28 • Compass Bank states I owe them $ 7,595.74 • Refund due cardholder $ 2,787.54 • Breach of Duty damages $30,000.00 Total Due Cardholder $32,787.54 I made my last payment to Compass, and I will not make another one. You and your colleagues' total timely correct Compass' mistake has cost me thousands of dollars in other companies believing your negative comment on my credit card report, and raising my interest rates and doubling my payments. Compasses is negligent of not performing their fiduciary duty by protecting my account and fairly credit the missing funds on the due date of January 15, 2006. Since January 2006, there has never been any intent of doing the right thing. There was no intent to investigate the matter. In fact, six principals of Compass determined this complaint and I were an annoyance and, at best, only deserved lip service versus an investigation. I believe that Compass breached its duty, when Compass received notification January 2006, that there was a missing payment. Compass breached its duty when they received confirmation from me and my bank in the form of a copy of my cancelled check deposited to Compass' account on January 3, 2006, and did nothing to correct the mistake. Compass continued the breach when Compass applied the misplaced money to the April 2006 statement, and not back to the intended payment date of January 2006. Compass continues this breach to-date by charging fees, over-balance fees, and double payments. Compass caused further harm by placing a negative mark on my credit account causing other credit companies to raise my rates and double my monthly payments. Instead of minimizing my risk to further harm, Compass recently closed my account that in turn put another mark on my credit report, which in turns continues to cause financial harm. My bank and I are prepared to show that Compass' particular acts or omissions were the cause of financial loss and damage sustained. I contend that Compass knew about the misplaced check by virtue of faxes I sent to Compass, at their direction, January 2006. I contend that Compass continued these acts and omissions after receiving telephone notification and mail notification by Washington Mutual Bank of the payment and a copy of the cancelled check in February 2006, and did nothing about the concern. I contend Compass continued a daily harassment of fourteen calls per day in January 2006, February 2006, March 2006, and April 2006, even though I furnished them all documentation requested. I contend that only after I sent to certified, return receipt letters to Mr. Jones, CEO and Mr. Haller, Attorney in late April 2006 was anything begun in the way of an investigation. I contend that after Mr. Jones and Mr. Haller received these documents, not one of these men ever read them or did research regarding my complaint. I contend that my documents were passed to Mr. Yates, who instead of applying the missing funds to the appropriate month, took the course of least resistance, and applied them April 2006. I contend that Mr. Yates never did research to ascertain that I began receiving negative marks on my account, fees, and doubles payments beginning February 2006. I contend that Mr. Yates notified the credit bureau to remove the negative marks from my account, but did not inform these companies that the negative comments were placed on my account in error by Compass. I contend that to-date, Compass by way of its representative Mr. Haller has sent letters containing falsehoods and merely dismisses these falsehoods with a Gilda Radner line, “never mind”. Mr. Haller expels contempt at my continued correspondence maintaining that Compass owes me for my time, my out-of-pocket expenses, the thousands of dollars now being charged me by other companies, and the harm and real possibility of financial ruin. Congress passed a law allowing banks and credit card companies expanded powers to seek repayment from debtors. This foreseeability by Compass allowed them to know that by not applying the missing funds to the appropriate month and delaying application of the funds by four months, fees would occur, double payments would ensue, and damage to a person's credit would apply. If any further communication from Compass persists, other than crediting my account as paid in full, paying my billable hours and monetary reparation for the stress and financial ruin I am suffering due to Compass's mistake, I will see legal counsel and pursue the matter with the courts. I will ask the court how Compass could make a cardholder responsible for investigating Compass' wrong doings. I will ask how Compass failed to respond to letters, telephone calls, faxes for eight months and bear no responsibility for this miscarriage of justice. I will ask the court how a member of the bar can write letters containing falsehoods and then dismiss these falsehoods in subsequent letters seeing no correlation to his inability to delve into this matter and get the facts straight and Compass' inability to do the right thing for over eight months. I will ask why a cardholder must bear the financial and emotional burden for a wrong the cardholder did not incur, and how Compass bears or accepts no responsibility. I will ask about the laziness, the lack of concern, and the ability on Compass' part to do what is right. I will ask who is in charge of these individuals since it appears that the Mr. Jones, CEO put his stamp of approval on all of these non-factual instruments. My only answer to Mr. Haller and his esteemed colleagues is that in order to be profitable, Compass needs a lack of ethics, and integrity to remedy complaints. Compass corrects mistakes as they see fit. Compass brushes aside any responsibility for ruining someone's credit and financial lifestyle. Compass failure to do a complete investigation on my complaints for the past eight month, to have an attorney send a letter making allegations that in a subsequent letter had to retract is unbelievable. For Compass to now feel like the victim, to feel oppressed by my charging for my time, long distance telephone calls to send faxes, for postage sending certified letters is laughable. Mr. Jones, Mr. Haller, Mr. Yates, Mr. Powell, Mr. Clanton, and Mr. Woznicki do not work gratis. To contend you are now penitently giving me back $116 that I never owed, to repay $49 in interest rate payment while charging me triple this amount, and to say “we made you whole” is beyond comprehension. Again, Mr. Haller, my address is at the top of this page. This account is paid in full. If I do not receive monies owed me within ten business days, I will proceed legally, notify the appropriate authorities with the Alabama and Texas Bar Association regarding this gross negligence on the part of Compass for lack of fiduciary responsibility, Breach of Duty and fraud. Patricia
arlington, Texas
U.S.A. |
