Man Rewrites Credit Card Terms in His Own Favor - Ep. 7.210

welcome once again to lato's law here's steve lato dan sent me a great story i'd never heard before and it happened a couple years ago 2013 but i had not heard this one and it's funny because it's something we've all thought of doing a guy got a credit card application in the mail and thought hey i wonder what happens if i change some of the fine print and send it back will they accept it now this happens in russia but i don't know why it makes it funnier to me that it happened in russia russian man turns tables on bank changes fine print and credit card agreement then sues and settles from nasdaq.com an interesting case out of voronez russia where a man is suing a bank for more than 24 million rubles which is about 727 thousand dollars in compensation over a handcrafted document that was signed and recognized by the bank dmitry agarkov said that he received a letter from a credit card company in his mailbox it's a credit card application form which similar the ones that we would get from visa mastercard or american express he filled in the form and returned the signed application though what he sent back was not exactly the same form that the bank had sent him he changed several parts of it to his own benefit most notably the fine print he opted in for a zero percent apr no fees and added that the customer is not obliged to pay any fees and charges imposed by bank tariffs he also changed the url of the site where the terms and conditions were published and additionally he added a special clause that would protect him should the bank break the agreement in a unilateral way for each unilateral change in the terms provided in the agreement the bank would be asked to pay the customer about ninety thousand dollars or a cancellation fee of a hundred and eighty thousand dollars he then sent his updated agreement to the bank and shortly thereafter received the bank's signed and certified copy as well as a credit card they apparently agreed after two years of active use the bank decided to terminate the credit card because he was late paying the minimum required amounts in 2012 the bank sued him for thirteen hundred dollars that amount included remaining balance fees and late payment charges the court decided that the agreement that agriculture crafted was valid and required agriculture to settle only his balance of 575 despite winning that round he decided that he hadn't had enough he filed suits in the district court of voronage launched hearings about his case and was apparently prepared to go after all the punitive clauses that he had inserted into the contract himself now the credit card company had honored uh some of the clauses but not eight clauses in the agreement so he wants the bank to pay him seven hundred and twenty seven thousand dollars so again that's approximately uh i guess ninety thousand dollars per clause [Laughter] and by the way he has a law firm representing him that uh said that the bank's decision to terminate the agreement cannot be lawful because his client was not paid all the penalty clauses as per the terms of the amended agreement um the bank said that the case was related to a non-recurrent technical issue and it is willing to fight this in court so then it got ugly because the bank's chairman went on twitter in response to people asking him about the case so people were tweeting about this and they asked the bank's chairman oleg tinkov what he thought about the situation and he apparently then went on a twitter tirade and shortly thereafter however the parties announced a settlement on undisclosed terms the president of the bank uh who's by the way um not the chairman said the conflict is counterproductive so we agreed to settle by withdrawing our mutual complaints uh agrikov said this started as a joke but the joke has gone too far of course i won't recommend other people do what i did before you opt in for a credit you must think multiple times and carefully study your bank's terms but if you agree you will have to stick to it now dan who sent me the stories that steve i don't know if you ever saw this one or not and i hadn't he goes but i've always been curious and he told me jokingly that what if you sign something big long document all kinds of disclaimers you sign it go but i'll still sue you anyways what is that most people don't even look at the signature you signed it and i think if there was anything to be learned from this case it's the fact that the bank saw his changes and they apparently and this is joyce signed and certified it and sent it back to him so he had a copy with the changes that they had signed now it's been a while since i've filled out a credit card application but they're often like this and i'm making i'm making a sign to indicate a long piece of paper that's me the thumbnail at that and it's a long piece of paper two-sided in like one point type that you can't read unless you've got like superman's vision and a microscope but it often is completely one-sided protects them and it says you know here's what we'll lend to the money at the rate the monthly payments the late fees and so on but you can't sue them you have to arbitrate you there's no such thing as a class action against them uh any anything you have to do is can be done in delaware or some other inconvenient location so on and so forth it's a completely one-sided contract and if you want to change the terms of the contract you're just out they won't change in terms of contract for you and they won't negotiate with you and now there are situations in life where you can negotiate a contract a guy comes out you say i want i want you to build me a garage he quotes your price you go i don't like that price i'll let you build it for a lesser price guy says well for lesser price i have to build this but i have to leave this out you negotiate finally you come to terms you sign a contract every everyone knows that works but there are other situations where somebody goes here's a contract take it or leave it and and you don't have to get a credit card from this company if you don't want to you don't want a credit card fine don't get a credit card they're not going to renegotiate the terms with you however the fact that he sat down and rewrote a bunch of charms and sent it to them and then they apparently signed it and sent it back is a problem it's very strange so i guess it's i was trying to remember the last time i filled out a credit card application um and again i know that you can do this online now right but online you still scroll through a thing and this is what it looks like when you're scrolling through a thing scrolling through a credit application on the internet and you can at the bottom you want to usually say you want to print this out print here and there goes you know half a ream of paper assuming you're allowed to print on your own printer but the language in those things is so lopsided in their favor everyone knows this but you you can't change it so this guy is a hero because he did what so many people have wanted to do and that is change a bunch of terms and send it back and see what they do and so i guess the question really is let's suppose that you got a credit card application in the mail a paper one and but they still send them i know they do i get them in the mail and you get this credit card application in the mail and you open it up and it's you know dear consumer you know it might not even have your name on it um as you know if you want this fill it out down here and we'll review it and you know whatever and and so you fill this thing out you send it you get it you get a credit card back okay um they've got that form at their end i suppose you ask them can you send it back they'll send you a copy of it but the question is if you scribbled changes on it what would happen and i suspect that they actually do have humans who glance at these things oh it's got this on it and they just would chuck it now if they didn't chuck it and sent you a credit card well i if you kept a copy that i suppose you might be able to make an argument about it and hope they saved a copy of it and and you know the question and what you know what happens if uh you go into court and say i modify the terms of that contract before i send it back to them judge might say do you have a copy of the counter signed because technically speaking most contracts mean that we both have to agree to the terms and if you send me proposed terms and i modify them and send them back to you i know what you're going to say sending the credit card appears to be agreement with those terms i can see judges saying however well you know they're handling a hundred thousand credit card applications a week uh and so if they missed that you modified one which you're not supposed to do uh i can't blame for that the other question is whether the contract has buried in fine german says the contract cannot be modified and then the question is could you modify that by the way these are all things you discuss in contracts class i had somebody that they asked me steve could you go into more detail on contracts contracts in general and i started thinking about it and the problem is that contracts is a class in law school it's a whole class and trying to condense that down to 15 or 20 minutes for a single video would be difficult but as an overview i might be able to do something so so stay tuned i'll do a video on contracts in general i doubt it'll be a barn burner as we say but i think some people might like it so we'll do that but dan thanks for sending me the funny story out of russia i loved it nasdaq.com printed it russian man turned the tables on bank changed fine print a credit card agreement and then sued and apparently settled and i suspect favorably at least on some level to him uh thanks dan for story questions comments below let's talk to you later bye-bye thank you for watching leto's law ninety-nine percent of failures come from people who have had the habit of making excuses

Channel: Steve Lehto

Views: 136,941

Keywords: lemon law, michigan lemon law, lemon law attorney, lemon law lawyer, http://www.lehtoslaw.com, steve lehto

Id: Xjs1qH6sYcw

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020