Applied Card Says it had Not Planned to Leave

The owner of Applied Card Systems says he was looking at several Huntington locations for a local call center in 2003 and was not planning to leave the area, as the West Virginia Attorney General’s Office claimed Wednesday.

And a Huntington area development official agrees.

Attorney General Darrell McGraw?s Office Wednesday released a taped deposition, which his attorneys contend shows that Applied Card was planning to leave the market before the attorney general filed a lawsuit against the company in March 2004 alleging abusive business practices.

Applied Card has maintained that it was the lawsuit and the attorney general’s unwillingness to settle it in a reasonable manner that prompted them to make plans to leave the market. In September, Applied Card took out full page ads in The Charleston Gazette and The Herald-Dispatch announcing it will close its Huntington office, which employed 600 people at the time.

The company now employs 550 as Applied Card has started transferring people to other call centers and losing people through attrition, company officials said. Applied Card does the collection and customer services for Cross Country Bank.

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