[Maestro]

Run as far away form Bill Me Later as you can...

I have been doing Interest Free for years, never paid a penny in interest and never ran into a problem until I ran into this Bill Me Later.

Last year I did a purchase from a company which I have been doing business with for over 10 yrs and never had a problem with them. I made a large purchase with them and the SA suggest I sign up with for their Visa Card and get 6 months no payment or interest. So I did it since I have no problem using other peoples money for a period of time.

Well I did what I unusually do, make a monthly payment then pay it off at least a month prior to the 6 month so not to get caught late on the last payment and have to pay all the interest.

I made all my payments online from my bank and all my payment got there at least 5 days before the due date. So I made the last payment 10 day prior to the due date and according to the bank it was paid. Well the last bill shows up 2 days prior to it being due and I see they never got the payment so they claim.

I immediately call my bank and they said the check was issued, I said "check" what do you mean I thought is was Electronic payment and they said normally that is true but this company (Bill me Later) would not accept e-payment they required a check to be cut. I call the number on the statement and get a person who claimed to work for the merchant who I made the purchase from and they were all nice and said no problem just get your bank to send them documentation of the payment being made.

My bank first tried to call them to get some facts and Bill me Later refused to talk to them so I finally got a fax number and send them the documentation and Bill me later said oh not good enough since it was a check I had to show them a canceled check, (well can not do that since bill me later claims they never got the check.)

Needless to say it took me 3 months to clear it up and here is what I found out. "Bill Me Later" is some shell company owned by another company. Bill Me Later contact merchandisers and offers them to issue credit cards or process credit orders for them online or phone orders. They then contract another company to process the orders and bill you and collect the money. They then contract some call center company to setup a call center which acts like they work for the Merchant you just made the purchase from.

So when you try to talk to someone who has any authority they say you can not since the people on the phone do not work for the merchant or Bill me Later, they just answer the phone, they will not even provide you a contact at bill me later. Now if you look up Bill me Later and get their number you get an auto attendant who will not allow you to talk to a human unless you have someone name or extension. I tracked down the CEO and a few others who work there and the auto-attendant did not recognize their names.

The only way I got the issue solved was going back to the original merchant and told them what Bill me Later was doing and got hold of the person who handle all the credit matters at the merchant and they agree it was not right and credited my account with them.

I can also tell this was not an isolated case, I ran into 100s of people who had similar experience with Bill me Later accounts and these were people who claim to be like me but Bill me Later did something that caused them to pay interest. The problem most people ran into was the fact the merchant washed their hands of the whole situation and made people deal with bill me later.

Oh they required all communications with to be written which go to a PO box and they will not accept any calls from any of their so call Bill me Later account holders.

This company is a scam through and through and they know the laws well enough they are just on the edge of being legal. The simple fact they will not accept an e-payment like every other credit card company out there show they they know there is no way to prove they ever got your payment unless you send it certified mail, and even then one person claimed they did that and who ever processes the payment refused the sign for it.

They are also very quick to slam you credit rating when these thing happen.

Beware of this company they will screw you.