In the summer of 2010, shortly before everything really went to hell, I wrote an email to a friend of mom’s from her church who was trying to help her. I had been doing my best to try to manage mom’s finances from 3,000 miles away, but it was a monumental task and I was quickly losing patience.
From: Gagne, David
To: [redacted]
Subject: Overdraft Charges on Mom’s Account
Sent: July 22, 2010 6:28 PM ETHey [redacted],
At some point in November of 2009, a company called National Union Fire Insurance called my mom and convinced her to join their “Customer Years” program.
Starting on December 14, 2009 and continuing on the 14th of each month up to the present, they have deducted automatically $18.95 from my mom’s checking account (ending in [redacted]).
I have never noticed this charge and / or didn’t realize what it was until July, because prior to the 14th of July I moved all of the remaining money in the [redacted] account into the account connected to her UCF debit card.
Because the balance on the [redacted] account was zero, when the $18.95 charge was processed it caused her balance to go into the negative, which generated an overdraft charge of $35.00.
Then, because there was less than some minimum amount of money in the account, Bank of America charged her an $8.95 monthly maintenance charge, which incurred another $35.00 overdraft fee.
Because I do not have power of attorney, nobody at National Union Fire Insurance will discuss the matter with me.
Her policy number at National Union Fire Insurance is [redacted] and the phone number there is (866) 237-8236.
I really hate having to ask you, but can you please call them with my mom on the phone (or just pretend that you are my mom!) and get them to give me permission to deal with her account?
I tried calling Bank of America in Florida, but — again — since I don’t have power of attorney they won’t really let me do anything.
This is about $150.00 that she has thrown away on this ridiculous scam, not to mention at least $70 in overdraft fees, if not more. I really want to try to get this money credited back to her account since she was basically the victim of unethical salesmen. It breaks my heart to say this, but she really just can’t be trusted with any sort of credit or access to anything other than cash.
Please let me know if you can do this with her. Thank you so much …
David Vincent Gagne