A letter showed up today letting me know that AMEX has decided it is about time to change terms on my Blue account. Namely, a pretty hefty jump up in my interest rate. Plus a ridiculous rate on cash advances — does anyone actually do them anymore, and if so, how clueless are they? Tack on some minor tweaking to late payment fees.

credit: the Other michael

Oh, and most interesting, they are dropping all overdraft charges. Does this mean I essentially have limitless credit? Why don’t I run down to the local dealership and see if they’ll let me throw a Cayenne Turbo S on it? Eh, well, maybe not… they may just allow it! With the way the auto manufacturers are stumbling over themselves to get you into a new car, one never knows!

Go ahead. Set my interest rate to 39.9%. Make the late payment fee $497. As long as you don’t pull a brain-damaged move like Chase and arbitrarily start charging me a fee just to have the account, I’ll keep you around, if only to keep my credit utilization portion of my credit report as low as possible.

Because in the end, I just don’t care.

I don’t finance my life with credit anymore.

I really have to laugh at the various credit card companies and their reaction to the imminent passage of new credit card legislation that curtails some of their most egregious activities. Threatening that they may just have to start screwing over their most responsible customers in order to make up for no longer being able to screw over their less than perfect ones as badly.

“Those who have managed their credit well and currently have very good credit card deals will find that card companies are limited in their ability to distinguish between them and those that have credit problems,” Edward Yingling, president of the American Bankers Assn., said in a statement.

“The result will be some subsidy from those that manage their credit well to those that have problems, affecting negatively the terms the former will receive.”

Who do they think they’re kidding? Those most responsible customers don’t need their silly pieces of plastic, after all. They are merely a convenience. Attempt to nickel and dime them, and you’ll see a mass exodus to either those credit card issuers who know that a fairly treated customer can be a profitable one, or off the credit merry go round altogether and using their debit cards.

Or, god forbid, back to cash. The Horror…

photo credit: jeremyfoo

With the success of our recently discovered income source, all of a sudden we have a healthy chunk of extra debt destroying powers. Since we have a variety of potential targets, we sat down recently to decide which target was most deserving of the full wrath we could focus on it, and made plans accordingly.

Since none of our debts vary all that much in interest rates, we thought we’d take the Dave Ramsey route and go smallest to largest. So, looking at the latest State of the Debt, that would mean knocking out the medical debt, followed by the HELOC, followed by the Low Energy Loan, followed by the Chase card, and then finally the mortgage.

But upon checking the balances of our various accounts online this afternoon, the order has been altered a bit. I noticed that Chase was ten bucks higher than YNAB said it should be. Wanting to fix what was likely an entry error on my part, I investigated further. Only to discover a mystery Account Service Charge for $10. Being as I had no idea what it was for, I sent off a quick email inquiring about it. I received this back:

As your credit card company, we value your business. It’s important to us that we address your questions regarding the terms associated with your account. Thank you for sharing your concerns with us.

We consistently review our business practices to ensure that we provide valued services and remain competitive in the business. As noted in your Cardmember Agreement, we may change the terms associated with your account and will notify you of the change in writing in accordance with applicable law.

Our records indicate that a Change in Terms notice was sent to you in November 2008, which advised of the addition of a $10.00 Account Service Fee and a change to the required minimum payment for your account, effective as of your January 2009 billing statement. Please note that the Annual Percentage Rate (APR) on your account is not changing and you may continue to take advantage of the promotional APR currently in effect on your account.

First off, Chase doesn’t send me a thing. I am enrolled to receive electronic statement, and haven’t received a single piece of paper from them since the last time they sent me a new card because the last had expired.

Nevertheless, searching out past statements just to see what I have apparently agreed to, I find a pdf of my Change in Terms Notice. Along with my Bose Sound Offer and my Holiday Rewards craptacular junk jewelry offer, which I had to check out because who knows what else they may have decided to sign me up for, as they can pretty much arbitrarily change the agreement to whatever strikes their fancy. (And in case you were wondering, nope, no Bose radio is on the way, nor any overpriced costume jewelry!)

And here is the gist of the Changes to my Terms, my emphasis added:

We’re sending you this notice to advise you of some new changes to your credit card account. These changes will take place automatically and will be effective with your January 2009 statement.

Here’s a summary of the key changes:

• A new Account Service Charge of $10 per month will be applied to your account.
• Your minimum payment due will increase from 2% to 5% of the ending balance on your monthly statement. As a result, your required monthly minimum payment will increase.

Important: Your APRs will not be impacted by these changes.

The key factors we considered when making these changes include the current APRs and revolving balances associated with your account.

The minimum payment jump of 3% doesn’t bother me so much. Only, quite honestly, because we can afford it now. Six months ago, it would have caused some serious hardship. There is a world of difference between a $324 minimum payment and a $850 one!

But the $10 a month Account Service Charge? That’s just petty. And pettiness deserves, well, a swift kick to the nether regions.

If you have any questions regarding these changes, please contact us by calling the customer service number on the back of your card.

Hello, Chase CSR? Please close my account. Immediately. I’ll scrape together the cash to pay it in full by the end of the month.

Oh, and bite me.

Not exactly breaking any news to those of you following the personal finance blog world, but HSBC has out of the blue decided to lop off a quarter percent on their HSBC Direct savings accounts. Mind you, the email I just received from them didn’t mention that fact, just that their summer high-rate promotion had come to an end (hmmm, I don’t recall a notice that their high-rate promotion had begun), but that the rate is still .2% above the rate they were offering before the promotion.

Oh, and that they were now offering the incredible rate of 3.75% on a CD…

Which just reminded me that I want out of HSBC-land. I only log into the account once or twice a month, either to deposit my monthly non-monthly bills money (ala something like 1/12th of our property taxes or 1/6th of our car insurance payment) or, if when it becomes time to pay one of those irregular bills, to withdraw what was set aside. And each and every time, I’m annoyed by their login process. On two occasions now, I’ve had to waste my time calling them up and plead to let me back into my account after screwing up the login a few times in a row.

If I truly value my time, just one call to restore my account after a login foul up will easily kills a few years in extra interest beyond what I can get elsewhere. It’s just not worth it to trade that five bucks or so a year extra my irregular bill fund earns at HSBC with the simplicity that is ING Direct (where I keep my side business money partitioned away from our ‘regular’ money).

So I just opened another sub account at ING, and in a few days, I can remove one more bank from my Financial Institutions I Have Accounts With list.

Back in February, I received a panicked call from our local grocery store: my wife had a small — but definitely cringe-worthy — accident. Walking around her car to get our son out of his carseat, she found a patch of black ice on the sidewalk, went down hard, and caught the edge of the base of a light pole with a ridiculous amount of force. When all was said and done, I ended up spending an afternoon in the local emergency room distracting entertaining my son. Meanwhile my poor wife had all the fun that head and spine CT scans and 12 stitches to close up a gash in the ol’ noggin can be. Like I said, most definitely cringe-worthy!

When we initially arrived at the ER, the attending nurse asked what had happened, and more specifically, where it happened. When I told her the details, she let me know that she would be sending the bill to the business who should have been maintaining the sidewalk, that most likely their insurance would cover the bill. And if not, then they would send it on to ours.

So everything was just fine and dandy, right?

Fast forward five months, and earlier this week my wife received a call from a debt collector claiming we owed a ridiculous amount to the company processing her CT scans. You see, the store’s insurance company and our insurance company are still battling it out to determine which one would be paying. The CT scanners were apparently tired of waiting, so decided to see if they could threaten us enough that we’d pay their incredibly inflated claim. My wife was having none of that.

Threaten to ruin our credit?

Go ahead, I don’t care — we’re not planning on borrowing anything anytime soon.

Threaten to sue us?

Go ahead. By the time this reaches the courts, it will have long since been settled.

How about you pay us now, and when whichever insurance company pays, we will send it to you?

Uh, you really don’t think I’m going to be doing that, do you?

Now this last one, when the wife mention it, this one intrigued me. I’m not altogether sure, but I’m believing something so blatantly a lie is probably criminal, though I’ll have to look into it to be sure.

Needless to say, the wife agreed to nothing, except that 1] the debt was not ours to pay, and 2] that Mr. Debt Collector should quit wasting his time contacting us, and that a letter to that effect would be en route to ensure exactly that.

Oh, and of course #3:

Debt Collectors are liars.

It’s amazing what a little venting can accomplish.

A day after I wrote of my problems getting ahold of anyone in my attempt to get a rebate from DirecTV actually paid, I cooled off a bit and tried using their standard customer service contact form. None of the comment topics they offered matched mine (‘Angry Rebate Seeker’), but I picked one that was reasonably close and sent off my missive anyway. A rather pointless exchange occurred between myself and a few CSRs telling me essentially the same thing (“We’re sorry, but the volume of rebates is so large that the payment has been delayed blah blah blah“), but at least I got to vent a bit.

Nevertheless, less than a week after the last exchange, what appears in our PO box but a shiny new rebate check for $100. Coincidence? I doubt it. The whole rebate system is just shy of a bait-and-switch tactic, with retailers counting on us screwing up, or giving up, and pocketing the difference.

That said, threatening to contact the FTC when they don’t meet their own terms appears to get rebate offerers motivated – not only did I finally get my rebate, yesterday I received a stack of free pay-per-view vouchers. And the FTC still got my complaint…

You can bet I’m going to carefully read the terms are on those before I even think of using them!

I realize part of the reason rebates are so popular with businesses is that the customer buys their product because of them, but then fails to actually get the rebate. Some people are just lazy or forgetful enough to neglect to do so. Or, often, the company make the process a big enough pain that the customer fails to fill out the form correctly or just flat out gives up on the process. Or, they ignore you and hope you go away.

DirecTV appears to be employing method #3.

We initially signed up with DirecTV when we moved out to the countryside, choosing it over it’s competitors mainly because of one channel (that we haven’t even added to our lineup yet): Sentanta Sports. I’m a rabid rugby fan, but you can’t watch it anywhere in the US as far as I can tell, except on Sentanta. But that doesn’t really make a difference to the matter at hand, does it?

When we signed up, they were running a $100 rebate promotion. So of course, I eventually got around to submitting it (but well before it was set to expire). Unlike some of my rebate attempts in the past, this was an utterly painless process that took less than a minute on DirecTV’s site. Almost immediately received my confirmation email stating the “Please allow 6-8 weeks to receive your $100 rebate check by mail” boilerplate. I naively assumed that actually getting the rebate might be as painless.

Nevertheless, my calendar popped up yesterday to let me know that it had been eight weeks since I had initially submitted the rebate, so I made a mental note to look into who I should be harassing soon. But what do I find in my email inbox today but another brief email stating “Your rebate submission has been received! Please allow 6-8 weeks for processing.” Going to the rebate site, I find their contact form, spent several minutes tracking down all the minutiae they require, put in my brief, cordial note on the problem (despite my initial impulse to word it along the lines of “What’s the deal with this latest email? Where the !$@! is my rebate already?“), and hit submit. Blank page, but for two words:

Illegal Request

@#&* You, DirecTV Rebate Department!

It’s been many, many months since our MBNA account (now Bank of America) has carried any balance or, for that matter, had a single transaction posted to it. In fact, the last time we received a statement from them was June 2005, the month we finally zeroed out that account. The last bit of mail I can recall receiving from them was when BoA took over MBNA and mailed out our new still-unactivated cards (along with the chunk of legalese that comes with any credit card). I check the balance online every few weeks just to ensure nothing is showing up, but outside that, we do absolutely nothing with the account.

The account has remained open not only because it is one of our older cards, but because the ridiculous level of available credit ($22,100) brings our total credit utilization score down quite a bit. In other words, it’s purely a credit score boosting play. But it’s time to say goodbye, and good riddance, to Bank of America/MBNA.

As I might have mentioned here a few dozen times, we not-altogether-recently bought a new abode, did an extensive bit of renovating, and only recently are making it our home. Since we weren’t living there, we, of course, took no steps to have any of our mail forwarded to our new address until very recently. As a matter of fact, we still don’t have any mail sent to our physical address. Instead, everything is shuttled to a PO box simply because I don’t trust an unlocked box in the middle of the countryside accepting anything that may aid your friendly neighborhood identity thief. Well, that, and the fact that our mailbox looks as if someone may have ran over the thing a few times!

But looking into the mailbox a few days ago on a whim, what do I find but a several pieces of mail from Bank of America with postmarks of August through the present, each being their standard packet of crappy-terms-and-all balance transfer checks. Yes, I know, I should have been looking in that mailbox on occasion. But not only did BoA put into effect an unrequested change of address, they’ve been sending blank checks to that address. I find it almost equally troublesome that personal information – by which I mean our new address – flows so freely to uninvolved parties.

So, curious as to how they went about changing the address without our intervention, I inquired. And received this in reply:

Thank you for your inquiry dated 1/22/07 regarding the address change. We will be happy to assist you.

Bank of America recognizes the importance of providing quality service and we are disappointed to learn of the difficulties that you have encountered. We appreciate you bringing your concerns to our attention. Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

We are confident that your future dealings with Bank of America will better reflect our commitment to your satisfaction.

Thank you for your business with Bank of America. Please feel free to use www.BankofAmerica.com for general account information, and for information regarding products and services that you may need in the future.

In other words, no comment.

Well, then, how about the number I need to call to immediately cancel our account?

It’s 1.800.732.9194, if you’re curious…

[tags]Bank of America,BoA, MBNA, cancel account, credit cards, identity theft, mail[/tags]

I’m beginning to think many companies have forgotten what went into creating their success.

I’ve shopped at Macy’s. Not frequently but, then again, not infrequently. The few times I’ve had any problem with something I had bought, Macy’s made it an almost pleasant experience correcting the problem. But I won’t be shopping at Macy’s again. George at Fat Pitch Financial shares his experience with returning a pair of jeans at Macy’s, and their request for his social security number to go about doing that. It’s bad enough that they are asking for a social security number in the first place just to return some wrong-sized clothing. But after your refusal to provide a potential dangerous (and entirely useless to them) piece of information, repeatedly asserting that “it’s the store policy” and having to involve a manager in an everyday transaction is patently absurd.

I’ve been reading quite a bit of Seth Godin lately. In fact, I just finished his book Purple Cow (might just have to put up a review of it a little later). In it, he puts forth the idea that standard marketing just doesn’t work anymore. That you must make yourself or your product remarkable to grab the attention of today’s fickle consumer.

And Macy’s is being remarkable. Unfortunately for them, with this policy, they’re being remarkably bad. Guess what, Macy’s. The products you offer are no longer unique. They haven’t been unique for quite some time. Name brand clothes can be had just about anywhere. The experience of shopping at Macy’s is what is unique. And if this is the experience you’re handing out, I can do better elsewhere…

[tags]Macy’s,customer service,social security number,SSN,purple cow,remarkable[/tags]

You know, I really appreciated the simplicity of paying the bank that took over serving our mortgage via their simple online form. No need to write out a check or make a call or, well, anything other than enter any additional principal I’d like to include with this payment, click ‘Pay Bill’, and then ‘Confirm Payment’.

I generally pay the mortgage the same day as I receive the bill. I like not having to think about it and the emailed receipt allows me to not worry about whether a check actually made it or not. Plus, it’s one of our must-pays anyway, so why wait.

So this morning, I receive my bill and, like the good customer I am, hit U.S. Bank‘s payment center to pay it. And what do I see at the bottom of my ‘Confirm Payment’ screen but a new line item: ‘Fees’. Just ‘Fees’. No explanation of what kind of ‘Fee’ it is; what it’s for; why I’m getting charged them now; nothing but ‘Fees’. Apparently they now want to charge me $2.50 just for the simple pleasure of paying my bill. Which, considering the the little mortgage we’ve got through them, is ridiculous – it ends up amounting to a 1+% premium on our bill. Well f&@k you very much.

They do have an automatic payment option that I can sign up for, no fees attached. But I like having the ability to easily tweak my payment if I’d want to pay an extra few bucks in principal in any given month. Fully automatic payments have always bugged me. I like the extra step, even just to remind myself that money is going out and that the payment is in the amount that I’m expecting.

So I’m stuck either having to pay to pay, via their little convenience fee or with a stamp when I mail in my payment (yes, I know, it’s just 39¢ a payment; it’s the principal of the thing damnit! ). Or I have to sign up for an automatic payment system that I don’t want.

Just one additional tiny but aggravating motivation to pay off everything as soon as I possibly can.

[tags]mortgage,customer service,bank fees,US Bank,annoyances,nickel and dime,death by a thousand cuts[/tags]