Home Depot Credit Card “Balance Protect” Enrollment New York Class Action

This class action brings suit against Citicorp Credit Services, Inc. (USA), which puts out a Home Depot credit card. The card offers an add-on service that claims to cancel the balance on the card under certain circumstances. However, the complaint alleges both that the add-on service is “virtually worthless” and that card applicants are enrolled in it without their knowledge.

The class for this action is all cardholders in New York who were signed up for Balance Protect without their affirmative consent, who were not eligible for some or all of the program’s benefits (such as self-employed persons), and who were not refunded all amounts paid for the program as a result of the 2015 Consent Order and Citicorp’s failure to stick to the Compliance Plan.

The Balance Protect program is worthless to most people, the complaint says, because they are likely to fail to meet the conditions to receive its benefits. Nevertheless, Citicorp charges a monthly fee that the complaint says “may be $0.99 for each $100 of a cardholder’s balance.”

Why do people sign up for this? The complaint says, first, that consumers apply for the credit card at small, point-of-sale terminals at stores. They were not informed at the time, the complaint says, that they were enrolling in the Balance Protection program, nor were they told of it eligibility restrictions.

According to the complaint, Citicorp “utilized pin-pad screen sequences with the Balance Protect option in the middle of the application as one of the ‘click through’ question screens” which made card applicants “conflate signing up for the credit card and enrollment in Balance Protect…” Also, it says, “The confirmation screen text was formatted to avoid providing clear and conspicuous notification of enrollment in Balance Protect.”

When applicants did notice and ask about what they were signing up for, the complaint says, they were reassured that it was only for the card. In fact, the complaint alleges, agents of Citicorp and Home Depot were “incentivized” to get customers enrolled in add-ons like Balance Protect.

Furthermore, if customers contacted Citicorp’s customer service agents, the complaint says, “they were given ambiguous and inaccurate information regarding their enrollment and cancellations options” for the program.

Finally, the complaint alleges, “When cardholders sought to cancel Balance Protect, [Citicorp’s] agents failed to adequately follow these requests.”

This issue was already raised in 2015 in a consent order from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau with Citicorp, Citibank, and Department Stores National Bank, the complaint says, and Citicorp was required to pay $700 million to cardholders.

However, the complaint alleges that Citicorp’s compliance plan was insufficient and that the company “engaged in deceptive, misleading and unfair acts by failing to cancel” the enrollment of the plaintiff in this case in the Balance Protect program.

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Credit Cards, Enrolling Consumer in Service Without Consent, Failure to Cancel When Requested, Unfair Services