Its not me, its you. Believe me, its you.

I have used this blog to complain about stupid, horrible things evil credit card companies have done. After writing these blog entries, I cancel the credit card. Call it a ritual of purification if you will.

This is another one of those blog entries. The culprit this time, the card on the chopping block, is my old Citibank card.

I’ve had this Citibank card since college, you know, back when you could send any credit card company a form stating that your annual income was $0.00 and they would send you a card with a $12,000 credit limit.

What happened after I got the card is typical – I ran it up and spend years paying it off, telling myself that the Simon and Garfunkel box set was totally worth that 20% interest compounded daily. I reached a crisis/breaking point, sold that extra kidney, and got out of debt.

There was a time period shortly before I got married when I got rid of a bunch of old credit cards, but I held on to the ol’ Citibank because I had a recurring payment for my Childreach kid and I just didn’t want to make the call to get them to charge another, better credit card. The hold music there is just so depressing…

Anyway, I have paperless credit card statements, so once a month, I log into the account and see the balance.

I logged in December and saw a balance of 0.00.

I logged in January and saw a balance of 0.00.

I logged in February and saw a balance of 0.00.

I logged in March and saw $51.48 in late fees.

So I call them, and was told there was a charge for $66.00 in December that I never paid. This makes sense, because I make quarterly Childreach payments of $66.00, but what doesn’t make sense is the fact that IT NEVER SHOWED UP ON MY STATEMENT UNTIL THREE MONTHS AFTER IT WAS CHARGED. HOW CAN I PAY FOR SOMETHING IF I'M NOT BILLED FOR IT?

This is the disadvantage of going with paperless bills – when you call the credit card company with a complaint like this, you have no proof. It is just your word against the word of the evil credit card company. And since the person on the other end of the phone is employed by the evil, evil company, your chance of winning the argument is about the same as getting struck by lightning 47 times in a row.

So I told the guy on the phone my issue and asked for him to waive the late fees. He couldn’t do that. I told him, fine, I wanted to pay off that rotten $117.48 balance on my account and close it. He said I could only do that if I was willing to pay a $14.95 processing fee.

“So what I’m hearing is that if someone wants to make a fast payment, you charge them extra.”
“That is our policy.”
“Doesn’t it make more sense to not charge as much since you get the money sooner?”
“That is our policy.”
“Ok, CallCenter Robot. I’m closing the account. You’ve lost my business and you’re already getting a blog entry. Could you transfer me to someone who will at least listen to my complaint and at least attempt to make things better before I tell everyone I know that Citibank is evil?”

To their credit, there was no hold music on the transfer. And my call did not mysteriously drop, like it has before when calling them.

The new person was a customer service person. He looked at my account and told me he knew what my problem was.

It turns out in December they closed my old account and transferred everything over to a new one. I don’t remember asking for or even wanting this, but lo and behold it happened. And they never changed the website so it pointed to the new account. For three months when I logged into my account, it would bring the old, dead account up by default.

Somehow, though it was totally my fault that I didn’t go digging through the incomprehensible Citibank website, looking for the new account I didn’t know existed. And, because it was somehow my fault, there was no way I could get out of the late fees or have the “pay immediately and be done with you once and for all” fee waived.

So I ended the call. I told them I wasn’t happy, that they had lost a customer, that I was going to blog about it like the big whiny goober I am, and that one day when I become a multi-millionaire, maybe, just maybe I would buy out Citibank just for the sheer maniacal pleasure of firing everyone there.

Dare to dream.

Customer Complaint and Corporate Joy

As some of the more business-minded ones of you out there may know, Bank of America just bought out/merged with MBNA.

My wife and I have been MBNA customers for some time, and have been really pleased with their service, even when they jacked around their agreement terms that one time.

Digression
Here’s that story. When we first signed on with MBNA for a credit card, the rule was this: if you pay the bill in full before the end of the bill cycle, they don’t charge any interest. So we set up all of our bills to hit before the end of the bill cycle. After several months of this they changed the policy so that they charge interest unless the bill is paid in full by the BILL DUE DATE, which is about a WEEK EARLIER than the end of bill cycle. So one month – WHAM – our bill is chock full of interest charges where there were never any before. We called to complain, were connected WITHOUT ANY WAIT TIME to an intelligent, courteous, living person who WAIVED OUR INTEREST FEES until we could readjust our bill paying schedule to accommodate this new timeline. The call from dial to departure, took all of five minutes. We were blown away. This was one of those positive experiences that made us evangelical for the company.
End Digression

So it was with disappointment and sadness when I saw that they were bought out by Bank of America. This is how I found out: I tried to log into my credit card account to view my balance and got redirected to a new website.

This new website not only told me I couldn’t view my balance until I agreed to new terms of service, but it made me click through TWO PAGES OF ADVERTISEMENTS before getting to the service agreement.

Because I distrust banks that rely on advertising revenue, I actually sat down and read the service level agreement. Which is hard to do because it was written by lawyers and if you read material like this too much, you start thinking like a lawyer. And, frankly, I don’t want to start oozing piles of ick.

The text of the service level agreement is quite impenetrable, but I highlighted all the areas where the words “fee” and “charge” were used. And then I called my trusty ol’ MBNA phone rep to explain the exciting new fees and charges to me.

First thing I noticed was a 15 minute hold time. This was something I NEVER experienced before with MBNA. The first thing my wife said was, “We miss the old MBNA.”

The rep said, “Oh, we’re still the same company.”

“Then why did I have a 15 minute hold time when I’ve never had that before?”

“Ummm… how can I help you today?”

Then the rep didn’t know the details about the fees, and would put us on hold while she found out. Whoops! Wouldn’t you know it, the phone got just a wee little disconnected.

So… eventually we got the official word which was this – If you download your credit card data in a Quicken file while you have Quicken running in the background, they charge you $20 a month. But if you download the Quicken file and DON'T have Quicken running in the background, banking with Quicken is free.

Which made us… happy is not the right word… neither is satisfied… um… NOT AS ANGRY AS WE COULD HAVE BEEN.

Except – get this – you CAN’T DOWNLOAD QUICKEN DATA FROM THE WEBSITE UNLESS YOU AGREE TO PAY THE $20 A MONTH SERVICE FEE. Which means the person on the phone lied to us, or was lied to and just passed that lie along.

This is bad because our household lives and breathes Quicken. We pay for the software and the upgrades, and somehow, that doesn't seem like enough money out of our pockets. Banks and credit card companies see this need to CHARGE CUSTOMERS EXTRA for using Quicken, when, in my opinion, they should be FINANCIALLY INSENTING people to use Quicken instead.

Seriously. Quicken SAVES time and money. So why do financial institutions feel this neet to make it suddenly WASTE time and money? It baffles me.

Oh, and they put the credit card on a new billing cycle so this month the window to pay our credit card bill without getting charged interest went from 28 days to 14 days. Thank you, Bank of America. Thank you for spreading misery all over the world. Your evil overlords are pleased with your work.

And I write all this because while getting more than angry about what a lousy customer/corporation relaitonship I was forced into, I was forwarded a nice little video of the Bank of America executives celebrating the merger. Good to see my issues are being dealt with in such a serious manner.

Normally supporting struggling musicians makes me happy. Not this time.