An overdrawn credit card

(CRIENGLISH.com)
Updated: 2008-03-31 16:10

The formalities for making this guarantee are very simple. Fu Pengwei merely signed his name on a form and all the other affairs were handled by Chen Ze himself. No wonder Fu Pengwei had no impression about this at all when he got the bank's phone call. Chen Ze's credit card was overdrawn. The bank couldn't find him through the contacts he left when this account was opened. They found instead the guarantor Fu Pengwei. But Fu Pengwei could not find Chen Ze either. In fact, no one could as he had already passed away.

It turned out that Chen Ze died from lung cancer in December, 2005. Now that he had died, who should pay the amount of the overdraft? Fu Pengwei thought of Chen Ze's family.

"It's Chen Ze's card. The amount of the overdraft is not too much, but some 5,000 yuan, or 670 US dollars. It should not be too big a problem for his family."

When Chen Ze was alive, the two families used to see each other quite often and knew each other very well. Fu Pengwei called Chen Ze's wife Wang Hexiang and told her about the bank's pressing for repayment. He asked her to pay off the money but the family's response was totally beyond his expectation. Here is the wife.

"I knew nothing about this matter nor had Chen Ze ever mentioned this to me. I was in the dark about this."

Chen Ze's son, Chen Tang also denied having any clue about this matter.

"I have never heard of this. I did not know this at all until someone told me about it later."

Wang Hexiang emphasized that she had never seen the credit card. Nor had Chen Ze mentioned the card when he handed over the family's financial affairs on his deathbed. So she refused to pay the money back.

"Fu Pengwei wanted me to pay it back. But why should I since I have never used such a card? My husband died first, then the card was overdrawn. We the family members knew nothing at all. It is only when he called that we learnt about such a thing."

According to the detailed bill for the card, the overdraft amounted to some 5,000 yuan, or 670 US dollars. But the overdraft occurred on March 2nd and March 10th, 2006, respectively, which was three months after Chen Ze had died.

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