Jewish World Review Feb. 16, 2005 / 7 Adar I, 5765

Jeff Gelles
Consumer Watch

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Consumer Reports


A refund takes 2 orbits of sun

By Jeff Gelles

http://www.jewishworldreview.com | Call me a cynic, but it seems to me that all you need is common sense to arrive at some important rules of thumb for consumers.

And Rule No. 1 may be this: Companies will always work harder to collect money than to give it back.

Evidence? Ask anybody who's jumped through every hoop and still watched a rebate fall through the cracks. Or anybody who's waited in vain for a refund from a cable or phone company.

Or Mildred Lermack.

Lermack, who turned 87 yesterday, has waited two years for a credit from Citibank for $3,000 that was fraudulently charged to her Visa card.

She knew how the charges got there: Her wallet was stolen in January 2003 while she was shopping near her home in Northeast Philadelphia.

She knew to report the theft immediately to her card companies, and to report the bogus charges - including $2,664 spent at a jewelry store - when they showed up on her Visa bill.

What Lermack didn't know was how hard it would be to get those charges canceled.

A Citibank official has finally promised to credit Lermack's account for them, plus interest and fees, and to undo any damage to her credit record. But she couldn't explain the delay.

Nor can I - except, of course, by blaming Rule No. 1.

If there's a natural tendency for companies to be laggards in giving you money they owe you, there's also a natural answer: Be persistent.

But as Lermack discovered, that too is easier said than done.

"I did everything they requested," she says. She made phone calls, submitted an affidavit, and followed up with more calls and letters. Still, the disputed charges remained.

The final straw came in May: a letter saying that since the charges had been on her account so long, and she'd been paying her bills, Citi considered the disputed charges authorized and valid.

Oh, and one more thing: "Despite your apparent knowledge of the charge(s) in question, our records reflect that you did not contact us until 05/03/2004 concerning this charge(s)."

The record doesn't reflect whether Lermack laughed, cried or screamed in response. But she did finally enlist the aid of her son, Harvey, a business professor at Philadelphia University.

Even he didn't have much luck as he tried to convince Citi that the delay was its own fault - or that it owes elderly customers, who may be less sharp than his mother, a little leeway if they fail to dot every "i" and cross every "t."

"They just buried her with paperwork and ignored her until it went away," he says.

It might have, if Mildred Lermack wasn't so good at playing by the rules.

Lermack, it turns out, knows her bureaucracy - she worked till the 1980s as a captain's secretary at the Naval Aviation Supply Depot - and the value of keeping records.

In her file was a letter acknowledging her report of the theft and fraudulent charges. It was dated Feb. 17, 2003.

That letter persuaded Citibank, says spokeswoman Janis Tarter, who looked into Lermack's complaint at my request. And Tarter said it may offer clues as to what went wrong.

The letter doesn't look like standard Citi issue. It lacks the familiar logo, and refers to CitiGroup as Citi Group.

Tarter says Lermack's complaint arose during a transition period, as CitiGroup was taking over accounts from her card issuer, Mellon Bank.

Tarter did clear up one point. Though Citi requires generally that disputes be put in writing and submitted within 60 days of a bill, it has a looser approach if fraud occurs, and no cutoff date.

"We don't really have a firm, written policy," she says. "We work with people on a case-by-case basis."

Harvey Lermack, who teaches management and organizational behavior, says big companies sometimes let details lapse, especially when duties change hands or get outsourced, as he suspects happened here.

Still, you have to wonder if Citi ever lets billings fall through the cracks.

It may just boil down to Rule No. 1.



Jeff Gelles writes the ConsumerWatch column for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Comment by clicking here.

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