Posted by MSFlorida on 8/12/13 11:04am
Msg #480168
Man beats bank at its own game
Man beats bank at its own game
A Russian customer decides to rewrite a credit card contract, and now the company is complaining because it didn't read the fine print. Shoe, meet other foot.
By Kim Peterson Fri 1:07 PM
When most of us get unsolicited credit card offers from Visa (V -0.40%) or American Express (AXP -0.30%), we toss them out. But one Russian man got a little creative with his, adding his own conditions to an offer in small print.
Dmitry Agarkov didn't like the terms initially sent to him from Tinkoff Credit Systems in 2008, Russia Today reports. So he wrote in a few changes -- zero interest, zero fees and unlimited credit, mainly.
He then took it a step further. On the contract, he changed the URL of the website showing the bank's terms and conditions. He also stipulated that the bank pay him $91,000 for each change in the contract and $182,000 to cancel the deal altogether.
The bank approved the document without looking at the changes and sent Agarkov a credit card. Perhaps most amazing is that Agarkov then proceeded to use the card for two years before the bank caught on. Last year, the bank sued him for nearly $1,400, which included his balance, fees and late-payment charges, Russia Today reports.
A judge looking at the case sided mostly with Agarkov. A contract is a contract, after all. The judge ruled that Agarkov just needed to pay his balance of $575.
You get the sense that Agarkov is enjoying this. Now he's suing Tinkoff for $727,000 for not honoring the contractual terms that he added. But the bank is furious at this point, and founder Oleg Tinkov is suggesting on Twitter that Agarkov could go to prison for fraud.
This is why we are not aloud to let borrower's write on Loan Docs Too funny!
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Reply by rolomia on 8/12/13 11:51pm
Msg #480268
Corporate America rules the roost b/c we let them.
Russian consumers don't have it as easy or as good as we do. They HAVE to be creative. Necessity IS the mother of invention. Maybe if things were worse, here, we Americans might discover our own voice to resist such corporate abuse now tolerated by unwary consumers. Eventually, consumers, everywhere, will have had enough and will be fed up enough with the fed. Then, things will change.
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