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- The Apple Credit Card From Goldman Sachs Has Been a Co-Branding Nightmare; Now Apple Wants a Divorce
The Apple Credit Card From Goldman Sachs Has Been a Co-Branding Nightmare; Now Apple Wants a Divorce
by Pam Martens and Russ Martens Wall Street on Parade
The employee at Apple who was put in charge of conducting due diligence on aligning the Apple credit card brand with Goldman Sachs, needs to be immediately demoted to sorting envelopes in the mail room. It has been a match made in hell, generating headlines in the business press over the billions of dollars Goldman Sachs has lost attempting to ramp up a credit card division from scratch while spawning federal investigations into Goldman’s less than timely handling of credit card customer complaints about fraudulent charges, billing errors, refunds, etc.
After hundreds of those complaints piled up at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the Bureau opened a federal investigation. (The CFPB is the federal agency created to hear directly from defrauded consumers following the 2008 Wall Street-generated financial crisis). In the most recent quarterly report filed by Goldman with the SEC for the quarter ending September 30, the firm reports that the investigation is still ongoing, writing: