Tag: banking scam

Banking Scams: How Banks Are Legally Stealing Your Money and What You Can Do About It

The down economy has hurt more than just general public – banks are feeling the pinch as well. In an effort to generate extra income, they’ve become quite creative and sneaky in their tactics. We refer to these at 720CreditScore.com as banking scams. They are the ways banks “legally steal” from you month after month, most times without you even realizing it.
Whether you want to hear it or not, the truth is that the banks are in bed with the government and although the government tells the banks to “treat people fairly,” they continue to steal your money, while greedily taking money from you (via the government and your tax dollars) at the same time.
To spread the message and help people avoid these banking scams, we’re inviting everyone to share their stories of banking scams that may have happened to you. The goal is to make the public aware of what’s really going on so you can protect your hard-earned money. A few dollars here and there may not seem like much, but when you add up the thousands of accounts they are doing this to, you can see how much banks depend on these banking scams.
This is an important issue that we believe strongly about and we greatly appreciate your time in sharing your scam. If you don’t have a story to share, take a few minutes and read through the scams to make sure you don’t become a victim, or share this page with others who you think will benefit from the information.
To make it easier to find your story, if you’re sharing a scam please start your comment with the words “BANKING SCAM.”
If you have a facebook account, post this via the Facebook Comments below so we can get this message out!
In the spirit of sharing, here is one that happened to me recently.
US Bank: BANKING SCAM
If this isn’t a scam from US Bank, I’m not sure what is.
Last week I was helping my Mother in Law close out her lease with US Bank, she owed the final payment of $395, so I called to pay it.
Before they collected the payment, I told the US Bank Representative that my Mother just moved from California to Arizona eight weeks ago. She gladly took the information and then told me that she will have to charge my credit card $405 instead of $395. I asked, “Why?.”
Well, I found out that it is US Bank’s policy to charge an extra $10 fee for billing addresses in Arizona. Interesting.
Hmmm… I have clients all over the world and it doesn’t cost me extra money to charge a person’s credit card in Arizona vs. California. Even if it did, NO WAY it would be $10. And, even if I were charged extra, I wouldn’t even think about passing that on to the client.
Here I am, five days after this happened blogging about this US Bank Scam… to my entire client base. These companies need to start focusing on building more value to their clients instead of penny pinching all of us.
Here is how I got around the $10 scam. I told her to change my address back to the California address and rerun it. I told her, “If you charge me the $10 fee, I refuse to pay the bill.” She changed the address, I saved $10, and I’m not using US Bank again!
Share your Scam!!
Philip Tirone is a Credit Scoring Expert and Champion for the Human Race

Other Scam Posts:
The Retail Store Credit Card Scam – Click to Read
The Dirty Little Secret that Hurts Credit – Click to Read
Protecting Yourself from Common Bankruptcy Scams – Click to Read

Your Bank’s Big Lie About How Credit Scores Affect You

I recently conducted a private class for the parishioners of a church about how credit scores affect you. After the class ended, one of the participants, Lori P., sent an email that shows how banks lie to their customers.
I am involved in an entrepreneurial program that helps people become business and home-loan ready, as well as get them ready for business start-up. Four of us in the program had attended a meeting with a founder of a minority bank here in Los Angeles that explained to us how to become loan-ready for his bank. He mentioned that all we needed was a 630 credit score along with other criteria.

‘I thought, “Wow, only 630? That seems easy.”

‘Then when I listened to your program, it made sense why we only needed a 630: It would be money in the bank’s pocket.
-Lori P.”

I was livid when I received this email. Lori is helping people from her community take control of their financial future, and the banker is thrilled to charge them higher fees because of a lower credit score. How are hardworking Americans ever supposed to get back on their feet when their banks are ripping them off?
And this happens all of the time. Every single day—every single hour and probably every single minute—a banker neglects to tell a customer about the easy steps people can take to fix a bad credit score.
Instead of telling the truth about how credit scores affect you, banks across the country are letting their customers pay an arm and a leg in interest rates.
For instance, the banker Lori met with isn’t telling her that the difference between a 630 credit score and a 720 credit score is $63,720 over the course of a 30-year loan on a $216,000 mortgage.
The bank is deceiving its customers to the tune of $63,720!
I wrote 7 Steps to a 720 Credit Score because I wanted to help my mortgage clients learn how to build credit and lower their interest payments. Then I decided I wanted to spread the word about how credit scores affect you. I went to bank after bank, telling them I would give them access to my book so that their clients could how to raise their credit scores and negotiate lower interest rates.
Guess how many banks signed up.
Not one. Why would they do the right thing when they could pocket $63,720?
This is so typical of what happens every day.  While the “little guy” struggles to get his head above water, the government is busy bailing out big business because they are “too big to fail.” And these very same businesses turn around and lie to their customers. This is flat-out unfair and wrong.
Learn how credit scores affect you, and stop the banks from stealing more of your hard-earned money. Download The 35 Things Your Bank Doesn’t Want You to Know About Credit.