Wednesday, March 07, 2001

It will be three years next month since Barbara Streba of Bellevue discovered Wachovia Bank Card Services expected her to pay $3,266.78 her ex-husband had charged on a credit card.

After running up about $10,000 on two credit cards and unable to pay off either one, her former husband, Ted Streba of Green Tree, filed for bankruptcy.

	Barbara Streba of Bellevue holds collection reports that have been sent to her over the past three years after her ex-husband ran up about $10,000 on two credit cards and filed for bankruptcy. (Franka Bruns, Post-Gazette)

Unable to collect the $3,266.78 from him, Wachovia and later three collection agencies went after his ex-wife -- big time. Letters. Phone calls. Faxes to her at work.

All that -- and more --- for a debt she didn't owe.

They didn't stop until I called Ed Hutchins, a spokesman for the company.

And, in keeping with Barbara Streba's three years of tears, frustration and anger, this is how her day went on Monday:

A debt collector posing as a member of Wachovia's legal department called her at work. He threatened to take her to court and asked her why she hadn't sued her ex-husband for fraud.

Another "pay-up" notice was in her mailbox when she got home.

A Wachovia official called her at home to say her record will be cleared, a letter to that effect will be sent to her and the debt collection agencies will be notified.

"I can't believe this," she said. "Do these people have any idea of what they have put me through?"

Of course not. They won't know until it happens to them or a member of their immediate family.

Barbara Streba, 40, a mother of three, initially was too trusting and too scared to handle all the verbal and written abuse heaped upon her.

Streba, a dental assistant, called Wachovia when she received the first "pay-up" letter in April 1998. A woman named Joanne said her name was on the credit card account established by her ex-husband, now 40, a blue-collar worker.

"I felt I had no choice but to pay something on [the account] until I found out how responsible I truly was," she said. She started paying $23 a month.

"I made those payments, thinking I had an obligation to pay. I trusted what the people from the customer service were telling me was the truth."

She started to have her doubts when a Wachovia employee, after listening to what Streba had to say, said she couldn't believe Barbara Streba was making payments.

Streba then made the first of numerous verbal and written requests for a photocopy of a document, purportedly with her signature on it, that authorized Wachovia and then the collection companies to come after her for something her ex-husband was responsible for.

She never received it.

That convinced her to stop paying and start fighting.

In the meantime, her credit rating took a beating.

She applied for a Lazarus charge card, a AAA credit card and a Federal Housing Administration loan to buy a home. Each application was rejected.

She called several lawyers. Half of them told her to pay off the bank card. The other half said she would have to pay them a lot to avoid paying off the Wachovia card.

That's when she contacted me.

When I relayed her story to Hutchins, he said Wachovia has "a long-standing policy about not discussing customer relationships." But he said he'd look into her problem.

I also asked him for some consumer-friendly tips I could pass along.

He said those who want to know their status on a credit card should call the company that issued it and ask. If their name is on a joint account, they are responsible for the debt. If they are listed as an authorized user, they are not responsible for the debt.

Barbara Streba said neither Wachovia nor the three collection agencies would send her anything in writing that would show she was responsible for the debt.

Hutchins urged those involved in a separation or a divorce to call the credit card company, advise it of their evolving status and ask to have the account closed or to remove their name from it. And, as soon as they put down the phone, they should write a letter to the company to document their request.

Streba called me after she heard from Ron Quigley, a Wachovia official at the company's office in Atlanta. He told her she wouldn't be bothered again. She prays she isn't.

"Compared to the people I spoke to in the past, he was my best friend," she said. "He was so sweet, so sickeningly sweet. I told him I had been harassed for years, that Wachovia had messed up my life for almost three years. I asked him why I couldn't have been helped three years ago. He said he didn't work there then."

Wachovia Bank Card Services, a subsidiary of Wachovia Corp., and the 12th largest issuer of bank cards, has 2.8 million active accounts. As of Dec. 31, it had $74 billion in assets.

The company did the right thing by Barbara Streba.

But it shouldn't have taken this long.

Lawrence Walsh can be reached at 412-263-1895. His e-mail address is lwalsh@post-gazette.com.