The verbal tennis match regarding the management of the troubled Fingerhut catalog continues.
The Minnesota attorney general’s office says it has received numerous complaints from Fingerhut customers, many regarding the stiff late fees that the Minnetonka, MN-based general merchant charged delinquent customers. State attorney general Mike Hatch contends that former parent company Federated Department Stores “ran the company into the ground in three years.” Federated shuttered the Fingerhut catalog earlier this year before selling it in June to FAC Acquisitions.
According to reports, some of the credit fees ran as high as $22 on a bill that had minimum payments of $10, says Hatch, who plans to look into whether Federated gave customers enough notice before imposing the charges.
“What Mr. Hatch fails to realize,” counters Federated spokesperson Carol Sanger, “is that Fingerhut made its decision to switch from an installment line of credit to a revolving line of credit before Federated purchased Fingerhut in 1999. If not for Federated, Fingerhut would have been defunct long ago. If he wants to criticize, maybe he should look in his own backyard.”