Consumer complaint received 2022-05-16
Company: DISCOVER BANK
State: CA
Product: Credit reporting, credit repair services, or other personal consumer reports
Sub-product: Credit reporting
Issue: Problem with a credit reporting company's investigation into an existing problem
Sub-issue: Problem with personal statement of dispute

Complaint:
In XX/XX/2020 my wife passed away. Before my wife passed away, unknown to me she had opened a credit card account with Discover Credit Cards. She used my Social Security #, her business PO address, her email, her phone number. I never signed anything, nor had I any knowledge of this. My wife used it for house hold purposes, so it was not like she was stealing from me. So after her sudden death, I had no idea this account existed. Also, we ended up in probate court and much of my assets were frozen. Everything was in my wife 's name, I was diagnosed with XXXX a year earlier. Then XXXX hit a month or XXXX later. DMV, Courts, everything closed. It took me a while to find the my wife 's business po box . All the statements were being sent there. Then I had to find the key, when I finally got in the box it was completely stuffed with all kinds of bills and mail. I had enough funds to cover all the bill however it was locked up by the courts and in her probate estate. I had no problem paying off the all the other credit cards in her name as I'm allowed to pay her debts with her estate funds. However Discover was in my name. As soon as I found the Discover statement, I called them, I didn't dispute the charges, but I explained to them the situation and I asked them to put the debt in my wife 's name and I can pay them right away. They said the couldn't do that. I pointed out that they did not even have any of my information until I just gave it to them, surely you can do this simple thing for me. They refused. They claim it was fraud and I needed to file a fraud claim and that is the only option I had. So reluctantly I did. It was hard filing papers that made my very recently deceased wife look like some kind of criminal. But I had no choice, I didn't have any funds available at the time. There was over $ XXXX cash probate locked up. After all that Discover said, that it was not fraud. So I asked them for statement or proof that they had my wife 's data on files at least and they said I had to do all that myself. They refused to help me in any way. So I did the best I could and had my attorney petition the courts so that I would be able to make this payment. It was a long grueling process with COVID and courts closing and all this. In the end my attorney said to go ahead and use the funds to pay it he will fix it with the courts. So technically I illegally paid this debt ( with my own money ). I asked Discover if they could clean up my records and they assured me they could after I sent the money. They never did. I never ran from them, never did they have to chase me, I did everything I could to get them paid as quickly as I could. They refused to help me and if you ask me they were 50 % responsible along with my wife for creating this mess in the first place. They only had my SS #. Did they check nothing? And now I have a blemish on my credit history, I'm the only XXXX that didn't make a mistake, I'm the one that cleaned the mess up, I paid for all of it including late charges. I do not feel that I should be the one to have anything negative marks on my credit history or anything else. I think they owe me and apology and a thank you! This is totally unfair and unjust. I'm the exact type of person who creditors would love to do business with. In contrast other creditors treated me completely different. As soon as they knew of a death in my family XXXX sent me directly to the XXXX XXXX XXXX. They stopped charging me interest right there. I didn't even ask. They said, " Do not worry, we are with you, we are going to work through this together and your credit will be undamaged in the end, we are so sorry you are going through this. '' And they did. Discover was horrible. During a time when I thought I hit rock bottom, they managed to show me that I can still burrow down a bit deeper and if couldn't do it they were happy to give me a hand to do that. It's amazing the amount of effort they would make to hurt me even when helping would have been less work for them. They need to really reflect on their business practice. And if you look at my credit report you can see what I say is true, everything is prefect except Discover looks like a train wreck.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation