Latefee Avoidance

Complaint as to Late Fees, Usury and Other Outrageous Charges

Here is your chance to speak out against the outrageous, monopolistic charges being assessed against you and more than 100 million other consumers by the nation's oligopoly of banks and credit card issuers or other businesses or agencies imposing excessive late fees and other excessive charges. Typically, we are referring to the following types of late-fee imposers: banks, credit card companies, savings and loan associations, department stores, other retailers, car and other leasing companies, postage-meter and other rental companies, small-loan companies, landlords, co-ops, colleges and universities, medical organizations (no-show fees), utilities, IRS and other govermental agencies (penalties and interest) and others too numerous to include. You should draft your complaint in a word processing program (to enable you to save your work and use it against for complaints against other greedy businesses). The complaint should be made in one paragraph not exceeding 2,000 characters including spaces. Make sure that you give the full name and address of each company about which you are complaining, with correct spelling, the date and description of your transaction or events giving rise to your complaint; the dollar amount involved; what you did to try to resolve the problem; and your name and email address.

Website users, including corporations engaged in such outrageous consumer-charge practices, will be able to search the full text of all complaints. It is anticipated that the registration of your complaint with this website may encourage the wrongdoing corporations to take action with you to resolve the complaint. If this occurs, let us know and, if you request, we will delete your complaint from the records. In this way we hope that your complaint may in fact accomplish something for you. Also, you are encouraged to send a copy of your complaint (with a working link to this website) to the C.E.O. of the business or agency involved. Complaints can work, CitiGroup just announced in January, 2006 that it was listening to consumer complaint about late fees and has created a credit card (the "Citi Simplicity Card" with no late fees, if at least one purchase or cash advance was made during the billing month. Elsewhere we have provided forms of complaint letter for complaints against any of the top credit card companies.

A typical complaint could look like this and could serve as a form for your own online complaint:

My name is Carl E. Person. On November 3, 2005, I sent a check to XYZ Credit Card Company in full payment of the balance of the credit card. The due date was stated to be November 10, 2005. I believe that payment 7 days in advance of the due date is reasonable, particularly in light of the fact that the credit card company only gives me 14 days to pay by the time I receive its statement. I spent several hours complaining about the late-fee charge (of $35) and said that I didn't believe it should have been assessed against me. The postmark on my envelope should establish the date that I mailed the payment to them (which was the same date as the date I put on my check). The credit card employee said that the envelopes are thrown away and that I should pay the charge, that she does not see any reason that I shouldn't pay since millions of their customers are paying the charge when they are late with their payment. I hung up and decided not to use the card any more, unless other credit card companies have worse practices (which I feel I'm going to find out is true). I paid the $35 under protest, which I realize is a meaningless gesture unless I am to bring suit. Any ideas anyone? I hope that someone contacts me to resolve this matter, and am interested in seeing what a lawsuit could do, if there is an attorney willing to bring suit on a contingent-fee basis. I'll advance all out-of-pocket expenses just to get some degree of satisfaction out of the deplorable situation.

[Editor's Note: This sample complaint has about 278 words and about 1,490 characters including spaces.]