Category: banks

Lacking Grace


I got my Bank of America credit card bill last week. I had had a balance of $54.01, and I paid it off. Or so I thought. I get the bill and I have a balance of $1.50. I figured that, damn, I must have miscalculated the payment, maybe transposed some digits. Nope. I’m now being given the privilege of paying a buck and a half per month as a “Minimum financial charge.” I did not notice this in the ream of papers that BoA had sent me recently to keep me informed of my “protections” in light of the new credit card legislation, before which they hiked my credit card rate. (Which is only one of the reasons I always pay it off in full.)

Now, I never actually applied for a Bank of America card. It’s in my possession because BoA, in its acquisitive phase, bought the bank I DID have a credit card with. So I’m not feeling a great deal of loyality for these folks. Still, I have over a quarter of my credit with them. And, as I’ve noted, all of it available. Well, except for $1.50.

Then last weekend, I watched The Daily Show with Jon Stewart from earlier in the week. His guest was Jim Wallis, the editor in chief of Sojourners magazine, which is a “progressive Christian commentary on faith, politics and culture. It seeks to build a movement of spirituality and social change.”

Wallis, who was touting his book Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street, explained that the bonuses paid out this year – $150 billion from six banks – could “erase the budget gap in all 50 states”, or prevent or postpone foreclosures until 2012. But these bonuses are a symptom of a larger problem: the erosion of underlying values. He says “we won’t get an economic recovery without a moral recovery” as well.

But what really struck me was his notion that the banks, such as BoA, had been offered grace by the US government, and by extension, by the American people. The response by the large financial institutions, Wallis noted, has been a distinct lack of grace. So, Jim Wallis fired his bank, Bank of America.

With BoA nickle and diming (and six quartering) its customers like that, I can do nothing but the same. Goodbye, Bank of America.

Watch the clip here.

“Higher standards,” indeed.

ROG

ROG

Shopping QUESTIONS

So how are you doing with that Christmas shopping? I happen not to be fond of shopping at any time of the year, but particularly now. If he didn’t live 800 miles away in Louisville, I’d probably hire Eddie to do my shopping for me, assuming he worked cheaply enough.

It doesn’t help that after watching The Story of Stuff!, a down-to-earth story of production, consumption and our future on the planet, I’m wary of buying much of anything.

1. What percentage of your shopping is done? Mine’s about 45% finished.

2. Where do you shop?

In box stores? Well, not in THE big box store, and generally I tend to avoid big stores like the plague.

At the mall? Rarely at Colonie Center. Never at the Pyramid Corporation’s Crossgates, even before this debacle that briefly made the national news:
The first Crossgates Mall Peace Walk was in 2002 when a group of folks from various groups entered the mall wearing shirts that said: Drop Toys Not Bombs, Don’t Attack Iraq and Peace on Earth! They were rounded up and escorted off the property under threat of arrest. Steve and Roger Downs heard about this and went into the mall to see if it could possibly be true. The rest is history. From Wikipedia: “At the dawn of the Iraq War in March 2003, the mall (Crossgates) became the center of a free speech controversy when Selkirk resident Stephen Downs was arrested refusing to take off an anti-war t-shirt that he had purchased in the mall. After many objections, the mall dropped the charges. Shortly thereafter, a large protest was held at the mall where many people came wearing anti-war attire.”
BTW: this year’s WEAR YOUR PEACE TEE SHIRTS Crossgates event will be Thursday, December 20
5:15 pm – press conference in the parking lot of the Cinema 18
5:45 pm – in the food court to hook up and to to meander and “shop”
6:15 pm – converge at the food court again to sing

I’ll go to the non-chains – in this area, today is Buy Local Day.

But I’m generally inclined to use mail order.

3. Are you spending more or less than last year? I think I’ll end up spending slightly less, but I’m not sure yet.
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I called to get my renewed credit card authorized using the automated system yesterday morning. After approving it, it asked if I wanted a PIN number – OK. But then it told me I couldn’t get a pin number at that time and that I needed to speak to a customer service rep. I gave my name to the human. THEN he tried to sell me some damn service I didn’t want. I told him that I needed to catch a bus in eight minutes, which happened to be true. Grrr!!
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Getting into the holiday spirit.
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From the Shake That Brain! Newsletter

TRUE STORY:

I recently took out $100 from my bank’s cash machine. Only when I got home I discovered that my cash card was missing. I called the bank and they explained that the cash machine had taken it back.
Taken it BACK???
Turns out that the bank was having problems with people using fraudulent bank cards. So they rigged the system to keep the card for 60 seconds while the inside optics scanned it for authenticity. Great solution? No. Because that same machine is designed to spit out your cash in less than 30 seconds. So what happens to a lot of people? They take their cash and leave their card behind — like me.
“No warning bell? No buzzer to let you know to not leave without your card?”
“Why would anyone need that? People know to wait for their cards.”
“Tell me: How many cards does each machine ‘take back’ on a daily basis?”
“Two or three.”
“So you solved the problem of fraudulent cash cards?”
“Absolutely!”
“And that other problem your solution created?”
“What problem is that?”
LESSON NOT LEARNED? When you “solve” a problem make sure your solution doesn’t leave a NEW problem in its place. In the case of my former bank, this is the difference between: “It’s all about me” and “It’s all about our customers.”

ROG

ROG
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