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terryclothOr, well, still have to. Bank One decided to become super-evil as of April, effectively eliminating their grace period (you need to have a *zero balance* as of the due date, instead of having to pay all old charges) and imposing a $1.00 minimum finanace charge, which adds up to an effective 64% interest rate on my account. That's a little too evil to ignore.
I was complaining about it on Spindizzy last night, and people said I should call customer service, because most credit card companies are super helpful and will do anything to keep you from cancelling the account. That proved not to be the case here.
The first time I called, the person on the other end was horribly confused, and said that I was getting charged because I was consistently 21 days late with my payments. 'The payment was due march 6th, and you paid it march 29th!' 'No, I payed it February 27th. The payment on March 29th was for the April 6th due date. That's why I don't have any past due balance on the statement.' 'No, it says here that you last paid your bill on March 29th. The bill for march was due on the 6th'. Etc.
The second time I called, they were less confused, but obviously not authorized to do anything, because all they did was repeat that since I'd gotten a charge on March 22nd, and hadn't paid until March 29th, I received a finance charge. 'But my bill says that THIS statement, due May 6th, covers the period from March 11th until April 9th.' 'No, the statement period is from the 10th until the 6th.' 'Well, one of you is lying to me here, because the bill I'm holding and looking at right now says that that's due on May 6th, which hasn't happened yet.' 'Look, SIR, I already explained to you how this works, do you have any other questions?' 'Yeah, can you cancel this fucking account, because it's useless.' 'I don't have to listen to you swear at me. *click*'
Anyway, it's just as well she didn't cancel it, because I should really switch the people automatically billing to that credit card to something else before cancelling it. Earthlink should be easy enough -- you can do it online -- but the motor club has only a phone number as contact information, and the customer service phone line claims that they have an unusually high volume of calls, and can't take any right now. 'Please call back later in the week.'
It's all really annoying, even if the money we're talking about here is utterly trivial.
I was complaining about it on Spindizzy last night, and people said I should call customer service, because most credit card companies are super helpful and will do anything to keep you from cancelling the account. That proved not to be the case here.
The first time I called, the person on the other end was horribly confused, and said that I was getting charged because I was consistently 21 days late with my payments. 'The payment was due march 6th, and you paid it march 29th!' 'No, I payed it February 27th. The payment on March 29th was for the April 6th due date. That's why I don't have any past due balance on the statement.' 'No, it says here that you last paid your bill on March 29th. The bill for march was due on the 6th'. Etc.
The second time I called, they were less confused, but obviously not authorized to do anything, because all they did was repeat that since I'd gotten a charge on March 22nd, and hadn't paid until March 29th, I received a finance charge. 'But my bill says that THIS statement, due May 6th, covers the period from March 11th until April 9th.' 'No, the statement period is from the 10th until the 6th.' 'Well, one of you is lying to me here, because the bill I'm holding and looking at right now says that that's due on May 6th, which hasn't happened yet.' 'Look, SIR, I already explained to you how this works, do you have any other questions?' 'Yeah, can you cancel this fucking account, because it's useless.' 'I don't have to listen to you swear at me. *click*'
Anyway, it's just as well she didn't cancel it, because I should really switch the people automatically billing to that credit card to something else before cancelling it. Earthlink should be easy enough -- you can do it online -- but the motor club has only a phone number as contact information, and the customer service phone line claims that they have an unusually high volume of calls, and can't take any right now. 'Please call back later in the week.'
It's all really annoying, even if the money we're talking about here is utterly trivial.
