credit cards Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Avoiding the Credit Card Late Fees

I’ve previously kvetched about Bank of America tacking on a $1.50 monthly fee for the privilege of holding their credit card. I’ve since noticed that my cards with Chase and Wells Fargo likewise are charging me this, and I intend to cancel those as well; they are a little bit trickier in that I have some automatic payments tied to those cards, such as my cable/phone bill.

Let me be honest; 15 years ago, I might not have noticed. But 15 years ago, I had credit card debt approaching five figures. Surely I would have been paying far more interest every 30 days than eight or twelve bits.

Now that I finally have zero credit card debt – none, zilch, nada – these ticky-tack charges really bugs me.

Citi ISN’T charging me this monthly fee yet. It’s just, like most of the rest of them, threaten to increase my interest rate by 50% or more and tack on an outrageous fee if I’m late. This is why I have at least my minimum payment taken out automatically from my checking account.

I got my Discover bill this week. I have an automatic payment on this card too, which happens to be the whole amount of $36. It also has the Late Payment warning: “If we do not receive payment by the date listed above, you may have to pay a late fee of up to $39…” Ah, a potential $39 charge on a $36 purchase.

But here’s the kicker: the minimum due date is March 25, but my “next automatic payment will be on” March 26! I am so paranoid that I called DISCOVER to see if I have to write a check, something the arrangement should have avoided. I discover from a nice woman named Donna that my auto-payment would NOT be considered late, that it was DISCOVER’s processing mechanism. Moreover, she stated – correctly – that if the company were to treat their customers that shabbily, they would soon not have many customers left.

So I shan’t worry about it. But I WILL blog about it…just in case.
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A video only everyone who owns, used to own or will own a credit card should watch.
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How do you make a contribution to reduce the public debt?

ROG

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

QUESTION: Political Mind

1. So how did you get to think like that? Was it a function of your parents?

My parents were Republicans when I was growing up. But being a Republican in New York in the 1960s meant moderate people like Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, Kenneth Keating (all from NY), William Scranton (PA) and George Romney (MI), not so incidentally the father of Mitt. As the Republican party got more conservative, starting with Nixon’s “southern strategy” which followed LBJ’s signing of the Civil rights Act of 1964, the Democrats became comparative more liberal.

2. Were your parents politically active? Did they talk politics with you?

My father was socially active. though he had a full-time job, he was also a community organizer, keeping the kids off the streets and engaged in meaningful activities. (I must digress here. I’ve seen a number of folks note that Martin Luther King Jr. and even even Jesus Christ were community organizers, which I would argue is largely true. Doesn’t mean Obama is saying he’s MLK or Jesus, any more than if I said I’m for peace so I must be just like Gandhi.)

I don’t remember my parents working campaigns or even putting up bumper stickers or fliers. I do recall talking to them about their votes in the 1968 election, when I talked them into voting for Hubert humphrey rather than Dick Gregory.

3. Have you ever worked on a political campaign?

A few times. the first was supporting Bill Burns for mayor of Binghamton, NY in 1969, I think, in any case, before i could actually vote. Beyond blowing up balloons, I don’t recall what I did. Did more for McGovern in 1972, for naught. My next effort, in 1974, was more successful . I think I’ve only worked four other campaigns, in 1980 (lost), 1995 (won), and two this century, but only because friends of mine wee running – and they both won!
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OK, I’ll admit that publicizing the fact that, as a result of a class action lawsuit, TransUnion is offering free credit monitoring, and doing so on every platform to which I have access is partly in retaliation for TransUnion and the other credit reporting companies trying to sell me stuff for which I was entitled to for free when I had my identity theft scare. Still I want everyone to take advantage of the deal, and you have less than two weeks to do so.

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

Giving Credit Where Credit Isn’t Due

I canceled a credit card with a $25,000 line of credit this week. It was a card I didn’t use much anyway for which I failed to make a $11.25 payment on time, missing it by a couple days. I was charged a $15 late fee, which is actually LESS than some of the usurious charges on some cards: $25, $29, $35, even $39. The customer service rep was very helpful, but, surprisingly, she did not ask why I was canceling, trying to keep me as a customer, which is usually the case.

Now, my available credit on my cards is only twice my gross income, which is still absurd. (This does not count any credit cards involving my wife.)

I started collecting credit cards in the 1980s. For a while after college, I had none. Then I got one from Sears (first purchase: a clock-radio), which at the time was considered easy to get. Then I’d get any and every card they’d give me, as long as I didn’t have to pay an annual fee. It became a game. More than once, I’d get a card free for six months, then cancel it; as often as not, when I called, they agreed to waive the fee for another year; you can often negotiate with these folks.

But now that I care about things such as credit scores (my most current one was 751, whatever that means), I’ve taken the advice of pieces like this and this and this.

ROG