Bank: Credit card problems solved for senior citizen
Published: December 2, 2005
Ben Suggs spent November 30 celebrating his 88th birthday and he received a gift he’s been wanting for almost 13 years.
“What did you think when you got this letter?” I ask him.
“Well, if I wasn’t so old, I’d have been jumping up and down a little bit,” he laughs.
The beginning
To understand the happy ending, we have to take you back to 1993.
Since that time, Suggs has been trying to pay off an $800 debt on a Sears charge card. His three daughters told me that the bill came several months after their mother’s death. The daughters checked with Sears and were told certain items, including a bedspread and a lamp, had been purchased on the charge. But they say they never found any of these items in the house after their mother’s death.
Their father however, felt since the bill was in his name, he should try to pay it. So Mr. Suggs, who had a limited income at the time, began paying $40 per month. Over the years, he accrued late fees and apparently higher interest charges and in early November, when I met the family, his bill was close to $2,000, more than twice the original bill.
His daughter Elaine Mitchell told me that her dad has been living on less than $700 per month in social security and recently, paying for cancer medication.
This bill has become a crisis for him,” Mitchell said that first night.
“I must say, they don’t have no sympathy for nobody,” Mr. Suggs said to me.
The surprising ending
In early November, I contacted officials from Citibank who are now in charge of the Sears credit card portfolio and who collect the bills from Sears customers. They were concerned about Mr. Suggs’ situation and promised a customer service representative would contact the family. And they indeed followed through, first sending Mr. Suggs a reimbursement check for late fees.
“$667.65,” Suggs says as he reads the amount on the check.
But now the best news of all. The check was accompanied by a letter saying the entire bill has been forgiven. When I met with the family a second time we looked at the new balance.
“Zero!” we read off as we looked at the papers.
Suggs couldn’t be happier about the outcome.
“I’m fortunate, and happy, thanking God for much of this,” he told me.
“Just thank you for just taking the time to just come and air my dad’s story,” says his daughter Elaine Mitchell. “And you might not even know how many people it might help.”
The family also wants to thank Citibank for what it has done.
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