After all the trouble in the credit industry over the last couple of years, the offers I used to receive in the mail for credit cards almost every day pretty well dried up. The envelopes with “0% For A Year” and similar pitches simply stopped arriving in my mailbox.
With big banks getting bailouts from the federal government and lots of consumers defaulting on their credit card payments, it is not hard to understand why they were not as anxious as they once were to sign up new customers.
It appears that things may be turning a bit now. I have actually received two credit card offers in the mail in the last week. It’s funny because I really didn’t notice their absence all that much until they started showing up again.
The first offer I got was from CitiBank, which was not a welcome sight. Reading through some of the other posts here will give you plenty of insight on how I feel about CitiBank and CitiMortgage and CitiGroup and Citi-whatever-other-names-they-go-by.
The second credit card offer was from Bank of America. I wasn’t all that pleased to see that one either. I was reminded of an experience my brother had with his Bank of America credit card that was not very pleasant. Let’s just say he had to resort to some extreme measures in order to convince them to treat him right.
It’s that kind of hypocrisy that can really tick someone off. You have multi-billion dollar financial institutions that probably have legions of MBA’s working for them, yet they don’t have the sense to keep themselves from the brink of going out of business, but will quickly welcome help in the form of bailouts drawn from taxpayer money?
What happens when a consumer tells one of those big institutions that they cannot afford to make their payments any longer, or that the interest rates are too high? Do consumers get a bailout? If so, it’s something I have not heard much about.
I’m not advocating handouts. What I am advocating is that some of these big financial institutions that were on the brink of bankruptcy themselves not that long ago should be a little more understanding when people who lose their income or suffer other hardships cannot make their payments.
If you are willing to accept a bailout, you should have the decency to extend the same courtesy to your customers and perhaps give them some time to get themselves on their feet again before demanding payment.
They can keep sending their 0% offers and whatever other enticements they dream up to my mailbox. I’ll just keep burning them in my wood stove or feeding them to my shredder. I’d rather not feed the monster that is so willing to accept help from Uncle Sam and less willing to give a break to some poor soul who doesn’t even have an MBA!
Granted, there probably are some decent companies out there who treat their customers better than others. If you are thinking about applying for a new card, I suggest you take some time to do some research and find out which cards have the most happy customers. With all the consumer information available online these days, it should not be all that difficult to find out.
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