Filing Credit Complaints

Complaining after you submit a credit card application

It is the nature of human beings to be interested in disputing with each other over differences of opinion. The free exchange of ideas is essential in a democracy and indeed it is perhaps the single biggest contributing factor to the successes both technological and sociological that we have had as a race.

Nevertheless, there is a time and a place for such behavior and when you are in an argument with someone that might escalate to being legal in nature that is not the time to have such an argument. If you have a genuine grievance against a credit card company because of the way they handled your credit card applications online, the way they botched your credit card search and held back results from you or any other action that they might have taken it is important that rather than coming up with a heated argument with the credit card company that you are calm and collected in the way that you approach the situation.

It is very true that this is easier said than done and that most people are not going to be able to follow this advice no matter how hard they try. The nature of bad credit cards, poor transactions and mix ups in personal finance are such that they can easily inflame a person’s emotion and make them very angry with the way that other people have treated them.

When you consider the big angry discussions you have had over your lifetime you will perhaps come to the conclusion that while anger wasn’t the best thing to resort to at the time it would have been very difficult to respond otherwise. We are creatures of emotion and that ultimately is what is going to define a number of these confrontations that we have.

Nevertheless, it is very important that people at least go ahead and try to deal with these mix ups in a very calm and civilized manner because rational thought will always win the day over emotion when you are handling a dispute of this kind. Many people have many questions to ask when it comes to a credit complaint and because of that the rest of this article is dedicated to answering some of the ones that are asked more frequently.

What starts disputes? This is a question that could quite seriously have its own article but we will attempt to answer it in short order here. Mostly, disputes are caused by a lack of understanding or a lack of communication. If a person goes ahead to apply online for a credit card and does not hear back over an inordinate amount of time then that is a lack of communication.

If a person were to go ahead to apply for credit cards with no credit then that would be a lack of understanding on the part of the person as to the basics of how credit and credit histories work. There are many situations that a person could get into where they would have one of these two in effect and while many times this happens between a customer and a company it is the way a situation is dealt with that ultimately decides the final fate of the dispute.

If the people discuss the situation with each other and come to an understanding the situation doesn’t go very far. If that doesn’t happen however, then even something as big as a court case might result depending on what happens in the interim between the customer and the company.

How should I resolve a dispute? Before you do anything else it is very important that you try and understand what has caused the dispute. If a person fills out two credit card applications online and then doesn’t hear back over a period of a few weeks then there might be a simple explanation for it. A simple explanation along the lines of a person not being able to retrieve their application from the database or alternatively a large queue in applications that has set the timeframes back awhile.

There are many different things that are simple in nature that might be the cause of the problem that you have as a customer and in order to best resolve these problems the best thing you can do is call the credit card company directly and ask them about the situations. If your credit card search is not returning any results on the company website, then call their customer support hotline and ask what the problem is.

If your online credit card approval cites information that you believe is incorrect (i.e. a bad credit history where one does not exist) then call the company directly and discuss the situation with them. You should always be looking to resolve the situation in the easiest way possible because escalating the problem will only serve to drive a wedge between you and what is most likely an honest company as well as add to your stress level.

What if that doesn’t work? If you have given a sincere effort into making things work directly with the company and have ended up with nothing then it is time to escalate the situation to a third party. Depending on what the dispute is you are going to want to contact different organizations.

Taking examples from the previous paragraphs if the situation is such that you have a dispute with the poor credit history information they provided then make sure that you contact the credit bureau responsible for your file and find out if it is true or not.

If your suspicions turn out to be correct then get the credit bureau to send a corrected version of your report to the credit card company. If you have an issue with the way in which the company has run their practices then you are going to want to contact either the better business bureau or alternatively the government agency local to you that is responsible for handling these types of disputes.

Either way, your goal is to escalate the situation as quickly as possible. Whoever you talk to in the end make sure you let them know that you tried to resolve this issue by talking to the credit card company directly.