Consumer complaint received 2020-03-30
Product: Debt collection — Credit card debt
Issue: False statements or representation — Attempted to collect wrong amount
Company: TD BANK US HOLDING COMPANY (MD)

Summary : While my account was in good standing, Target asked me to pay off my balance in full in exchange for Target removing negative credit bureau reporting. After I paid off my balance in full, Target refused to contact the credit bureaus. 

FACTS I was in the early stages of purchasing a home. In the process, I was informed that because I was reported 30-Days late for a credit card payment to Target for my Target RedCard, my credit score had fallen below the threshold needed to purchase a home. 

My Lender recommended that I contact Target and request a courtesy removal of the 30-Day late reporting, since I had an excellent payment history with Target outside of this one incident. I followed his recommendation. 

On XX/XX/2018, I called Target Card Services and informed the representative of the above situation and requested a courtesy deletion of the 30-Day late reporting. ( Note : At this time my account was in good standing and current, with a balance of {$100.00} ). 

The representative placed me on hold to discuss the matter with a supervisor. The representative returned to the line and indicated that Target would only request the courtesy deletion if I paid my account balance off in full down to XXXX. He stated that once I made the payment, I would have to call back the next day when my account balance reflected a XXXX  balance and Target would then initiate the deletion request. I asked once again that he confirm. Once he confirmed a second time, I asked him to enter this arrangement into the notes of my file, so that when I called back the following day, Target would understand the situation. After reading the notes back to me, he took my payment of {$100.00} via an over the phone check payment. 

The following day, I received a notification that my check for {$100.00} had processed and, after confirming my Target Card balance was XXXX, I called Target asking they initiate the request to delete the late reporting. 

I made a call to customer service and, despite acknowledging the notes in my account and my payment, Target informed that it would not issue the request to delete the 30 day reporting. The most the representative offered was to forward notes of my concerns to the department that handles credit bureau disputes and that they take about 30 days to respond. The representative indicated that he was directing that department to file a dispute on my behalf, indicating that the due date reporting glitched, which is not false. 

Due to the time-sensitive nature of my home purchase, Ive placed several calls to get updates since XX/XX/XXXX, with no success. Therefore, I also placed a dispute directly with the Credit Bureau to try to resolve the issue. 

I contacted Target, and was informed that Target was declining to offer any favorable gesture with respect to the credit bureau reporting. Specifically, Target refused to even attempt to contact the credit bureaus and have the negative reporting deleted. 

Target also informed me that it received a notification from the credit bureau that I had disputed the negative reporting and Target rejected my dispute.