Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Why I hate credit cards (BOA in particular)

In my last post, I told you a little bit about my frantic search to get all the cash to pay my parents back. I forgot to mention I even tried to open a new CC to get the last 4K. Finally Bank of America approved a cash advance for that amount (that CC was paid of with a limit of 6.6k).

Fast forward 8 days, I get a letter from BOA telling me that my cash advance could not be approved b/c my account had been closed. Further more they had gone ahead and reduced my limit on my ML to 100 greater than my limit. I was baffled. I had spoken to the customer service person and we had a conversation about why I needed the money. She said it was being processed and would be in my account within 3-5 days.

At this point, I didn't even want to call BOA to complain. Truth be told, if I had zero debt, they would be the first company I'd severe ties with. I have had bad experiences with their customer service and I really don't like them as a company. Plus, technically they can close whatever cards they like, i just didn't like the manner in which they did it. You have to keep in mind that i have NEVER in a 10 yr history been late on a payment or over drafted my card.

I am done trying to understand how credit companies work. You would think that a person who carries a balance, is never late and pays more than the minimum would be their ideal customer. That's a crapload of interest they make from said customer. If I were to pay my balance in full every month but got for example, airline miles, I don't think I would be considered a target consumer.

I just wish they would stop taking such a mathematical approach to how they run things. That's what got them in trouble in the first place. There definitely should be a person who looks things over with a more subjective analytical mind.

Anyway, the issue was solved because for a reason I don't understand (and I'm not going to question), I got an access cheque from a CC. I have promptly depoisited the required amount and I'm just waiting for it to clear.

Hopefully, there will be no more updates on this except me updating my sidebar.

****Random tip. I found out that you can just take you credit card to a bank and withdraw the money from a teller. If I'd just have done that instead of calling, I'd have the money I needed already.

4 comments:

  1. Mathematical approach is exactly the way to phrase it. I pay an obscene amount of interest to multiple cards, year in, year out, with never a missed payment, and no company wants to take me on for a percentage point lower than the companies that are already getting interest from me. That's a shame for them because they are passing up collecting, as you put it, an even bigger crapload of interest from me than from you (I say that because I'm almost certain that the rates I have are higher than yours.)

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  2. I meant to clarify that in their "mathematical approach," I don't meet their sacred credit score targets. That mathematical approach keeps them from acquiring a good and lucrative customer.

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  3. Why don't you open the Citi Forward credit card? I got it a few months back and I'm very happy with it, I even got 100 gift card! my credit line was over 6k.

    HS

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  4. I am based in the UK where we have the same debt culture as the US. I have found lots of blogs like yours, stories of people sucked in by the financial institutions. Unfortunately our governments allow them to hook us in, and then keep us in the debt trap.

    You should check out this blog for a different approach to debt:

    http://iwentbankrupt.wordpress.com

    Good luck with paying your debts off, hopefully you will be free sometime soon.

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Hit me with some tough love