Credit Card Companies: The other day I finally paid off my Discover Card, a credit account I’d had since 1995. I called them to cancel the card since I no longer needed a line of credit from them.
“Hi, I’d like to cancel my card.”
“Yes sir, can I ask you why you are cancelling?”
“Well, I paid off my balance and no longer need the card.”
“Sir, you have an excellent history with us.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Is there anything we can do to make you keep your account?”
“You can lower my APR to under 10 percent. [It was 17.99%]”
“I’m sorry, we cannot do that.”
“Then please cancel the account.”
“Yes sir, you have 90 days to re-open the account.”
“Thank you. Goodbye.”
This exchange was far more pleasant than when I cancelled my Capital One account about 6 months ago. After being transferred around to 3 or 4 different departments I ended up arguing with the account rep on the other end. He tried every tactic in the book to convince me to keep my account open. I finally ended up practically yelling at him to close my account, indicating that nothing he said was going to change my mind. I am happy to announce I have only two cards left, a Visa and a Mastercard. I only have the Visa because it gives me frequent flier miles and I was able to get them to up my credit limit to the point where I could buy a new car with it if I wanted.
I’m tempted to just cancel all my credit cards but I realize that I need to keep my last two accounts open because if I don’t my credit report will start looking weird and in a few years may cause problems if I wanted to buy a house or some other big ticket item that requires good credit.
Also when I talk to these companies on the phone they always ask me for my home phone, to which I reply “I don’t have one.” They act confused and I say that I only have a cell phone and refuse to give them that number because I do not want to start receiving telemarketing calls to it. I’ve also found that most of these customer reps are powerless in regards to removing your name and address from the company’s direct-mail database.
Experian is considering credit card offer spam. Just keep feeding the SpamAssassin monster. He’s a hungry beast.
What if Dick Cheney were a 419 scammer? Hilarious! [via BoingBoing]
Posted by Cameron Barrett at August 23, 2002 01:36 PM