MBNA - MBNA America - Bruce Hammonds CEO libel, slander, deceptive business practices, breach of contract, fraud, harassment RIPOFF Wilmington Delaware

I had a charge card account with MBNA America from September 1991 through January 2001. I never went over $2K in a single month and always paid on time.

I closed the account in January 2001. At that time, I owed $0 on the card.

MBNA didn't contact me at all between Jan and Sept 2001, when NCO (on behalf of MBNA) contacted me demanding $12K+. (Actually, they contacted my parents' residence where I had not lived for more than two years, and yes MBNA did have my current address.)

After I got off the phone with my parents (who were extremely upset) I called MBNA and NCO to try to clear up the matter as I didn't know anything about any alleged debt, other than what my parents had just told me. (At that time I didn't know any better than to not talk to creditors and/or debt collectors over the phone.) They both insisted that I owed the alleged debt and that they would be suing me "immediately" if I did not pay them in full within 24 hours.

That changed my evening. For the next 14 hours (4pm that night to 6am the next morning), I researched as much as I could about creditor and debt collection laws, and I filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau, the FTC, the Attorney General's offices in Illinois and Delaware, and with MBNA and NCO (along with debt disputes).

The moment NCO received their notice of investigation from the Atorney General, they immediately returned the alleged debt to MBNA. MBNA was unable to validate the alleged debt (then or at any time) and therefore was instructed to delete from all credit reports and to never again pursue its collection.

MBNA hasn't pursued it - actively. They never deleted it from my reports despite four years worth of validation, cease-and-desist, etc. letters from me. They've ignored almost all of my correspondence to date.

I hadn't pursued it as actively in the past couple of years - I got my mortgage at a great rate, so I had nothing to worry about, right? Wrong! Their listing (which they conveniently modified to show "paid after charge-off" to re-age the account) is now preventing me from getting a job and a car loan (which if not for MBNA's listing I would easily be approved). Needless to say, I'm re-pursuing it now.

This past week, I've placed an initial fraud alert with all three credit bureaus (the alert implicates MBNA's CEO, Bruce Hammonds, of fraud and other grave legal violations, as all my letters have gone to him). I've also informed MBNA that if they don't permanently delete the item from my credit reports then I'll be filing suit against MBNA et al (and I will, esp. if I can't get a job due to MBNA's passive-aggressive harassment and extortion tactics). As it will take a little time to find the right attorney to take this on, in the interim I'm preparing my FTC and Attorney General paperwork. Any other ideas?

Ed
Lake in the Hills, Illinois
U.S.A.