Credit Card Company Rant (1 Viewer)

[brun]

I pay a lot of recurring bills, cable etc., with credit cards automatically. Then my credit cards are paid automatically, in full, from my bank.

I also autopick most of my drafts.

 

[Johnny Rock]

Every other kind of customer is better than you

Not true. People who charge and don’t pay.

They make plenty of fees off purchases despite the no interest loan. 100% payers aren’t disliked by the cc companies as much as you think. Merchants are paying tons of fees.

 

[pollardsvision]

You may want to consider auto payments for accounts, such as this one, that always have small balances and are always paid in full. You'll never fall behind on those accounts and can focus your attention on the accounts that require decision making.

Of course, I see this from the POV of an old guy who is more forgetful than he'd like to admit. 

That's mainly where it comes in handy for me. I only use 4 credit cards regularly, but I have 3 others in the sock drawer. The couple of those that I'd like to keep open, but not really use, I put a small recurring payment on each month, and have autopay deal with it. 

For the cards I use, autopay is unnecessary (and the card balances are paid off well before the due date anyway). A feature I like having in place anyway though.

 

[pollardsvision]

So lets talk about this automatic payment setup.  Do you set it up at your bank?  Or do you set it up at each of the credit card/utility/mortgage/etc. companies?  The later seems really tedious, plus I don't want to expose my bank account information to all those companies.  The former seems OK but a 5 minute search at my bank says I can't setup "whatever the balance is" each month.

It differs from company to company, but I've found insurance, cable, cellphone bills are generally good to set-up for autopay on CC's through the company websites. Some other vendors for business are good.

But for a lot of companies (mortgage, utilites), they charge a fee that's higher than any cash back you'd from using a CC, so I just pay those through my bank.

 

[Bossman]

I have a question as well, but let me rant first.

I have excellent credit, have 3 separate CC accounts, and use each account for a specific purpose.  I never carry a balance on any CC account and pay every one of my bills on time (credit card and other bills).  One of the credit cards is used primarily by my wife and we get a paper statement sent to us each month which prompts me to pay.  We have some smallish expenses on this card nearly every month ~200 or less but sometimes we have zero for a given month.  I just realized today that we haven't made a payment since May (April statement) and started looking into it.  Long story short (too late), somehow the account was changed to "paperless" billing so I never got a statement for May, June or July, we had expenses on that card each month, so my account was marked as "past due".  Total amount for the 3 month period was $180 + $65 in late fees and interest.  I call them to see if they will waive the fees/interest since my account was inadvertently changed to paperless, and if so I'll square up the account right away.  I've been with the company at least 10 years and pay on time every single month.  I had to talk to 3 people and the last guy was able to waive the most recent late fee of $37 but that was it.  I said, you are willing to lose a customer over $28 and he said "we treat all our customers the same, we don't give special treatment to any customers".  That's a pretty stupid way to run a business, but whatever.  So I sent them the $208 and will be closing the account in a few days.  Yes, I am wiling to change CC companies over $28 given these circumstances and the crappy customer service I received.  I'm not a typical customer - I have a 10 year track record of paying my balance on time but they won't waive $28 in late fees/interest when I tell them I will cancel the card???  Very lame.

So two separate questions:

1) Any recommendations on CC cards?

2) Am I a bad CC customer because I pay my balance every month?  I really don't understand why they didn't work with me more since I've been with them so long unless they don't like that I pay off the balance every month.  $28 seems like a small price to pay to keep a long time customer.

Sounds to me like that $28 was all they ever got out of you.

To the extent they had to switch you over to paperless cus they were losing money in postage.

Put yourself in their shoes;

"I've been buying a 10 cent pencil here once a month for the last 10 years ... and your going to lose me over $28?"

 

[Juxtatarot]

@sbonomo So I'll put you down as "I'm a bad customer" to them.

You're not a bad customer.  But you're not providing much in revenue.  Maybe about $4 a month.  And there are costs to them to maintain your account.

And there are others risks to them too.  Maybe you'll lose your job, rack up your credit cards and default.  Maybe you'll die and your wife won't pay it.  Maybe there will be fraud on your account in the future that they'll have to eat.  Those risks may seem unlikely to you, but they're getting very little in return.

 

[NotSmart]

She must have been at a motel 6 if the total for 3 months was $180.

That's even worse then. :(