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2004 Suit (credit limits, credit reporting - on appeal)

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Target Card Charge Offs Rise to More than 8 Percent - selling portfolio

Target Card Charge Offs Rise to More than 8 Percent

April 23, 2008
Target Corp.’s credit cards saw higher charge offs in March as the mega-merchant proceeds with its sale of half of the $8.3 billion portfolio.
by Burney Simpson
insideARM

Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) reported yesterday that its credit card portfolio in March had net charge offs of $55.4 million, for an annualized rate of 8.12 percent, according to the retailer’s filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Target reported net charge offs of $47.5 million in February, for an annualized rate of 6.83 percent.

Receivables on the portfolio declined to $8.3 billion at the end of March from $8.4 billion. Target announced in March it planned to sell half the portfolio for about $4 billion to an unnamed investor (“Target to Sell Half of Card Portfolio,” March 13). Target issues the card through its Retailers National Bank.

The portfolio generated total revenues of nearly $1.5 billion, including interest, payments on purchases, finance charges, interchange and other fees. Total delinquencies tallied $517.2 million. For its delinquencies total, Target combines two missed payments, three missed payments and four or more missed payments. 

The portfolio had gross charge offs of $63.3 million, and recoveries of $7.8 million, leading to net charge offs of $55.4 million.

Target files a monthly update on its Target Credit Card Master Trust with the SEC.

Target this week also renewed its card processing agreement with TSYS, according to an announcement from the Columbus, Ga.-based payments processor. TSYS cited reports that Target was one of the top-five Visa credit card issuers, with more than 21.4 million accounts on file.

Target always charged me about 20% interest on my Visa.  I didn’t matter how perfect my credit rating was.  Several times I requested a lower rate and they declined.

Over 8% in chargeoffs is pretty high!  Well, their greed finally paid off. I suppose my play money didn’t help with the delinquencies:

Open Letter to Target: Why I stopped paying my Target Visa card

Friday, April 18, 2008

Cap One chargeoffs up, delinquencies down

Credit Card Charge-Off Surge Hits Cap One Bottom Line
April 18, 2008

The credit card giant reports charge offs rose sharply and will hover in the 6% level for the rest of the year. The good news was a drop in delinquencies.
by Patrick Lunsford

insideARM.com

April 18, 2008 Email This Article Print Consumer credit card giant Capital One Thursday reported that earnings for the first quarter fell more than 18 percent as charge-offs in its U.S. credit card unit spiked to a rate of 5.85 percent, with higher rates on the horizon.

McLean, Va.-based Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE: COF) said that in the first quarter of 2008, earnings fell to $548.5 million from $675 million in the first quarter of 2007. Total revenue in the quarter was $3.85 billion compared to $3.38 billion in Q1 2007.

The U.S. card unit was responsible for much of the earnings decline. The unit reported net income of $491.2 million, a 1.5 percent decrease from the fourth quarter of 2007 and an 8.8 percent decrease from the first quarter of 2007.

Cap One also reported a sharp rise in charge-offs in the card unit and the promise of more to come. Charge-offs rose in the first quarter of 2008 to 5.85 percent of all accounts from 4.84 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, and from 3.72 percent in the first quarter of 2007. The company expects the charge-off rate to be in the low six percent range for the next six months, but higher still in the fourth quarter.

As charge-offs rose, delinquencies dropped from last quarter, said the company. Card delinquencies improved in the first quarter of 2008 to 4.04 percent from 4.28 percent in the previous quarter but rose from 3.06 percent in the first quarter of 2007.

Are delinquencies down because Capital One offered the low / no interest checks?

I got that 6 months 0% offer in December. 

I wonder what percentage the chargeoffs need to be to put them out of business.

Friday, April 04, 2008

Open Letter to Target: Why I stopped paying my Target Visa card

Christine Baker
[address redacted]

ATTN: Terrence J Scully
President, Target Financial Services
Target National Bank
1000 Nicollet Mall
Minneapolis, MN 55403-2542

Via Priority Mail

April 3, 2008

Re: Dispute of my Target VISA card # 435237XXXX

Dear Mr. Scully:

I am hereby informing you that you can STOP having your collection employees hound me as I will not pay this account.

1) I initially stopped paying my $8,000 Target VISA card because my polite request to lower the over 18% interest rate was declined.

As per the 2/27/08 Target letter, it declined my request for a lower rate due to my Experian credit report and for the following reasons:

Number Of Accounts With High Balance To Limit Ratios
Ratio Of Balance To Limit On Open Revolving Accounts

It takes a lot of guts and bad judgment to charge a “valued” customer over 18% interest.  Obviously, I cannot reward Target for this usury with further payments.

The high balances were primarily incurred due to my litigation against credit bureaus and banks like Target and Capital One and to build my new house. 

It is not MY fault that the banks changed their underwriting guidelines and that I no longer qualify for a mortgage as when I started building.

For 1.5 years I made the payments on my credit cards, planning to refinance my credit card debt into a mortgage once the house was finished. 

Greedy bankers screwed up the entire credit market and I no longer qualify for a mortgage.

2) I recently discovered that Target didn’t actually lend me its own money.

In First National Bank of Montgomery v. Jerome Daly, MN 1969, judge Mahoney wrote:

Plaintiff admitted that it, in combination with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, which are for all practical purposes, because of their interlocking activity and practices, and both being Banking Institutions Incorporated under the laws of the United States, are in law to be treated as one and the same bank, did create the entire $14,000 in money or credit upon its own books by bookkeeping entry. That this was the Consideration used to support the Note dated May 8, 1964 and the Mortgage of the same date. The money and credit first came into existence when they created It. Mr. Morgan admitted that no United States Law or Statute existed which gave him the right to do this. A lawful consideration must exist and be tendered to support the Note . . . [Emphasis added]

And:

The sole consideration paid for the One Dollar Federal Reserve Notes is in the neighbourhood of nine-tenths of one cent, and therefore, there is no lawful consideration behind said Notes.

Unjust Enrichment.

The debt I allegedly owe was apparently created by accounting entries and Target had the audacity to charge over 18% interest.

As judge Mahoney wrote:

Slavery and all its incidents, including Peonage, thralldom and debt created by fraud is universally prohibited in the United States. This case represents but another form of Slavery by the Bankers.

I could not agree more.

I believe that Target PROFITED from the alleged debt created by fraud and you failed to share your profits with me.

These concepts are explained in the free online film Money as Debt at http://creditfactors.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2 and in Ellen Brown’s eye-opening book Web of Debt, available at http://www.webofdebt.com/

Money should be created by the government so that it can stop incurring new government debt and start buying back the national debt, maintain bridges and highways, provide medical care and education, ensure that social security funds will be there when I retire, etc.

3) The cost of my litigation against Target regarding its refusals to report the credit limits for its Guest Card by far exceeded the amount I allegedly owe to Target. 

I never understood why Target continued to litigate this lost cause even on appeal instead of supporting me, especially since it started to report the credit limits.  I don’t get paid for working on legal filings and Target chose to waste a lot of my time.

4) Target’s handing of disputes has not been satisfactory.

Most recently, the disputed Dish Network unauthorized charges caused serious problems and I really don’t understand why Dish was able to charge my account again after my disputes and specific instructions NOT to allow any further Dish charges.

Please immediately delete this fraudulent Target account from my credit reports.

Enclosed are $10,000 Stelojs (I can create money too) and Target is not going to get one more penny from me unless the government bails me out as it bails out banks and corporations.

I am sick and tired of corrupt governments ran by greedy bankers all over the world.  There is no place to go, the bankers infested every country with any kind of economy worth exploiting.

I decided to vote with my money and to publicize this Open Letter.

I hope to inspire many millions of judgment-proof consumers to stop paying their unsecured debt.

Sincerely,

Christine Baker

c:  posted at http://mylitigation.net/, http://creditsuit.org/ and other websites

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Collection letter from FirstSource looks like check and Target can take a hike

It looked like a check!

As I opened my mail and scheduled payments, I wondered what that check was.

So I see FirstSource, thinking it’s a bank and then I read:

“Your account has been listed with our office for collection.”

Huh?  What?  It’s for over $7k.  WaMu?  No.  American Honda. 

Finally I noticed some guy’s name on it.  It’s my correct address.  I’ll send it back to FirstSource.  It’s a very professional looking collection letter, polite, no threats, no violations.

TARGET had a change in terms, changing the definition of the prime rate.

The “Prime Rate means the highest U.S. Prime Rate published .... For each billing period we look at the Prime Rate onf the first business day of the month previous calendar month and the last business day of the previous calendar month.  The Prime Rate used to determine ..... is the higher of those two Prime Rates. ... [emphasis added]

I had just scheduled my payment, the rate is 18.24% and reading this, I feel like deleting the payment and moving them to the WaMu file.

I have paid Target SO much interest.  Well, no time like the present to call for a lower rate.  The feds lower rates every few days and Target RAISES my rate.

The first time I called, I couldn’t get to a person and the system disconnected me when I pushed zero. 

The second time, I finally got to talk to an Indian guy.  He was very polite, requested a lower rate and while waiting for his system to respond, was talking about some Kodak stuff.  Then he politely told me that my request for a lower rate was declined. 

He was at a loss for words when I told him that it’s ok, I’ll just stop making my payments.  He assured me I’d get a letter with the reason for the decline.  And I CANCELED my $226.35 payment online.

So there.

Considering that I’ve wasted endless hours on litigation to try to get them to report the credit limits, I really have no idea why I didn’t stop paying them a long time ago.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Banks expect Capital One to become insolvent - 9 business day hold on checks

Had to go to Kingman today to pick up building materials and finally got the long awaited Capital One check.

I previously posted how I had requested one of their promo checks on 1/10, Cap One never sent the check and hadn’t even bothered to notify me.  So they assured me that this time they actually send the check.  The $7,400 check had already posted to my credit card.

First I took the check to Compass Bank, where I was told that they don’t normally accept credit card checks and they’d put a hold on it.  The fact that this was NOT a check written by me, but an official Capital One Bank check made no difference.

I took the check back and went to Downey Savings.  They’re usually pretty good about clearing my checks, but not today.

I ended up with a teller in TRAINING and Lisa Hilderbrand, customer service supervisor, was doing the training.

She informed me that there would be a 9 business day hold because it’s a credit card check.  We discussed the difference between a credit card check that *** I *** write and a check that a BANK sends to me, made out to me, printed, the whole nine yards.  BEFORE lenders send out the checks, they post the amount to the account, whether a credit card, home equity loan, credit line, whatever.  There is no way that it could bounce because I don’t have enough credit on my account.

But, that doesn’t matter to other banks.

The ONLY reasonable explanation is that they think that Capital One will soon be insolvent.

So it actually is taking well over a month to get the cash from a Capital One check, there’s a hold until 2/12/08.

But that’s not the end of my bad banking day.

I had filled out the deposit slip with $800 cash back.  Downey Savings customer service supervisor Lisa Hilderbrand filled out another deposit slip changing the amount of the cash back to $100, casually advising that she couldn’t use the slip I had prepared.

I was stunned.

WHY can’t I get $800 cash?

The bitch started lecturing me again about their hold policy and that only $100 were available immediately.  I asked why they were freezing my entire account.  It turned out that she hadn’t even looked at my account!  I had several thousand dollars available and I finally got her to give me my cash.

Also, the deposit and getting the cash back took over 15 minutes from the time the teller started helping me.

After I had watched Ms. Hilderbrand explain to the teller how to process a deposit for 5 minutes, I advised that I was in a hurry.  She replied that she was working as fast as she could and she continued to train the teller and took another 10 minutes until she finally gave me the cash.

That bitch needs to be fired.

It’s been a while since I’ve been treated with that much disrespect.  It was almost like going to court!  Might have had to do with the fact that I didn’t look like a million bucks, as I was wearing the jeans and jacket I wore to hang sheet rock and drill holes for electric wires and pipes. 

I suppose it’s good to experience occasionally how the working people are mistreated all the time.

And of course that’s a good reason to do business online where they can’t see your skin color and clothes and you’re spared the humiliation.

A couple of weeks ago the Downey branch was robbed and I sure hope the robber spent the cash before he got busted in Vegas.  The banks deserve everything they’ve got coming.

And of course this is one more reason to STOP paying your unsecured debt if you’re judgment-proof.

Just about every time I go to a bank I hear people talk about NSF fees.  At the justice court are lines of people begging for extensions to pay fines.  And I doubt that Kingman Arizona is different from Anytown, USA.

Comment submitted at https://www.downeysavings.com/ad/contact/contactResponse?department=Banking

FYI, my posting about queen bitch customer service supervisor Lisa Hildebrand in the Kingman AZ branch:

http://creditsuit.org/credit.php/blog/comments/banks_expect_capital_one_to_become_insolvent_9_business_day_hold_on_checks/

I’ll appreciate your comments to add to my blog.

Sincerely,

Christine Baker

BTW, that’s how all the people who constantly email me complaints about their banks need to complain:

Grow up!  Stop being cowards!  State your name and THEIR names and post your complaint PUBLICLY.  Whining at me will never make a difference.