Financial Credit Services International

Reps of a company called FCS International (Financial Credit Services International) left a message on my phone asking me to call about lowering the interest charges on my credit cards. I spoke with three people. The first person claimed that he represented or worked for Visa and Master Card services. The third person I spoke with admitted that the company had no connection to any bank or credit card service but was going to work for me to get the banks to reduce my lifetime finance charges to 10% or less. My credit card would be charged $997 to be paid monthly for 12 months for a lifetime of protection (of any credit card now or in the future) against finance charges that would exceed 10%. When in the course of the person speaking to customer service at Capitol One Visa, we learned that my interest rate was currently only 7.6%! The person who was trying to enroll me in this agreement then changed his tune and claimed that he could probably get the finance charges reduced to less than 7.6% and possibly 0%! At this point I looked for a web site for FCS International at www.fcs-intl.com and discovered that that account had been suspended. I then ended my conversation with the person I had been talking to and said that I did not wish to proceed as I did not trust that this was a legitimate company or product. I was then referred back to another person that I had spoken with earlier who proceeded to threaten me with charges for "wasting the time of the people that I had been talking to" and then threatened me with a lawsuit, at which point I hung up and called my CC company to alert them and closed my current account on the advice of the fraud department of Capitol One Visa.

The people at FCS International--whatever fake company that might be--had some of my account information to begin with: they knew the amount of my current CC balance and used that info to gain my trust in order to begin calling customer reps at Capitol One. I'm certain that while I was answering security questions from the Capitol One customer service rep, the FCS guys were taking down my account information: number, answer to security question, last 4 digits of my SS#, billing address, etc.

Look out for these folks. They're intelligent and have a convincing rap about how they are going to save you thousands in finance charges and, of course, they're only interested in helping people get out of CC debt. However, they are selecting CC customers who have high balances and obviously are in good standing with their CC company and can afford to pay $1000 for a lifetime protection against high interest rates. I almost got taken - yikes!

By the way, the telephone number for the company is 1-888-826-1162 and the name of the man who threatened me (so he claimed) is Justin Davis. Caveat Emptor!