Quoting Dan Scanlan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Checking Your Bill for a New Charge Called 'Oops' > > By David Pogue > > (SF Chronicle, Dec. 4, 2003) -- Every few years, economists identify > another mutant variation of inflation to keep them awake at night. In > the 1980s, it was stagflation. Three years ago, it was deflation. And > now, meet the economic specter of the new millennium: stealth > inflation.
[clip] I think this article is on to something. My own experience with this phenomenon has been with my VISA credit card company. I'd had the card for something like 20 years with no problems or complaints--virtually always paid on time, etc.--when three or so years ago, suddenly and unilaterally, they canceled my VISA card and replaced it with a Mastercard. (The subsequently given rationale was that they'd negotiated a better deal with M-card.) Problem was, I already had a Mastercard and didn't need another--I wanted the VISA card I'd always had. I called and told a customer rep this, and told him I wanted the same setup I've always had--i.e.,a VISA card with no annual fee, and no interest charges if the bill is paid on time each month. He said yep, no problem, and sent me a new card. Fine. It wasn't until I got the next bill I found out that it had an annual fee. So I call. They say, oops, it was a mistake, we'll cancel the fee, but we've got to send you a different card. I say, one without an annual fee, right? They say, right, and send me a new card. Great. Until the next bill, where I see an interest charge, even though I'd paid the previous bill on time. So I call, and find out that on that card you accumulate interest charges immediately, whether or not the bill is paid on time. They say, oops, sorry, we'll cancel the interest charge, but we have to send you a new card. And I say, this one won't have an annual fee or immediately accumulating interest, right? And they say, right. And send me another new card. Okay. Well, at least I haven't had to change cards since then, but there have still been occasional annoying irregularities always resulting in me being charged for something I didn't know about, and requiring a phone call to a customer rep to clear up. In the latest go-round,for example, I got very busy recently and did something very unusual: I entirely forgot to send in the payment for a monthly bill. I discovered this when I got the next bill, with, of course, a hefty late fee and big interest charges. Oh, well, I think, my fault. I call a customer rep and ask how much I'd have to send in right then in excess of the amount on the current bill in order to catch up with *all* interest charges, so there would be no further accumulation of interest charges on the next bill, assuming I paid it on time. So the customer rep calculates a number, I add an additional figure *on top* of that, and send in my payment. Everything taken care of. ...Except not so much, since there were still additional interest charges on my next bill. So again I call, and find out from the customer rep that the earlier rep had made a mistake in advising me(oops), because it is company policy to let interest charges that result from late payments accumulate on any oustanding balances for *two* months, even if everything is paid in full after *one.* I see. But she deleted the interest charge. At some point in the above string of misfeasance I had the urge to get on PEN-L and ask if others had similar experiences. But then I thought, nah, probably just a combination of bad luck, miscommunication, new and untrained customer reps,etc. But now I'm not so sure. And I'm wondering, in light of the article Dan forwarded, if others have had something like this experience with their credit cards. In the meantime, you can find me in the barter economy. Gil
