I have had a Sam's Club credit account for years, and never had a problem. I had online bank set up to make payments on time, and it was a successful relationship. Sam's Club at some point turned over their credit to GE money Bank. The first sign that something was going wrong was late last year (2009) and early this year (2010), when I received a series of late charges. GE Money Bank is impossible to contact, but I finally was able to figure out that they had changed the due date at least twice in a period of a few months. I fixed the problem by setting up two payments per month, and everything was going along okay until June, when I received a series of collections call messages. When I finally connected with the collector, I told him repeatedly that I had made my payments. After he finally realized that accusing me of being a deadbeat and pressuring me to give him my bank info so that they could raid my bank account wasn't getting him anywhere, he looked at my account and discovered that they were posting my payments to an inactive account number. Apparently when you report a card missing they give you a new account number that is not printed on the statement or communicated to the customer in anyway. After about 45 minutes on the phone, and speaking to a supervisor, they finally agreed to post the payments correctly and credit back the late charge and interest. This activity was reflected on my July bill. They posted only one of my June payments, but I thought that would show up on my August bill, so I let it go.

When I received my August bill I had no payments posted (there should have been 5 payments because I made 1 in June, and 4 in July), and there was a late fee, interest and they cheerfully informed me that I had "triggered a Penalty APR" so they were increasing my interest rate.

I called their automated customer service (ha!) line, where you cannot reach a human being if you have a problem, and was stunned to find that the last payment they showed was 5/27, so they were not even giving me credit for the June 9 payment that was on the last statement!

So right now I have a total of 7 payments totaling $850.00 that my bank shows as cleared that GE Money Bank is apparently using for a trip to the Bahamas or something.

BTW, one of the menu options on the automated line is "missing payments, " so you know this has to be a big issue with this company. Seriously, they have such a big problem with missing payments that they have to have specific instructions with a special PO Box to handle their customers' complaints in this area on their automated line? Most companies just have a "billing inquires" option.