Ridiculous Sell Sell Sell.

[padi56]

For the sake of Jesus Why oh why do we have to put up with this ridiculous sell.....sell......sell......mentality?

About a year ago I took out a credit card from the financial services arm of a well known high street bank. I don’t do this as a rule, but now was about to spend several grand on furniture and they had some offer whereby (if I recall correctly) you got 3% back in gift vouchers.

So the logic was, if I’m going to spend £5k and have £5k in the bank, I may as well get the 3% benefit (£150) and keep the cash in my current account (which generously pays 1% below base – another £30) and trouser £180 in total.

If I then spend half the ‘profit’ on a treat for the wife, I can bask in the glory of a top up on the old brownie-point-ometer. Job done you might think.

This was until, part way through last month I receive, out of the blue a nice fat wad of credit card cheques inviting me to go on a great bloody big spending splurge. Incurring not only a 2% admin fee, but also instant interest from the moment the cheque hits the retailer’s grubby mitts - all contained in the fine print.No bleeding thank you


Anyway, these things arrive on Thursday: NOT A GOOD DAY. So I call customer services to register a complaint and speak to a guy called Gupreet yes a bloody Indian call centre. Gupreet dutifully notes the complaint and all seems fine and dandy but for one little detail.

GUPREET THEN STARTED READING FROM A BLOODY SALES SCRIPT

Gupreet then tries to sell me insurance to cover my bloody (NIL BALANCE) against death, disease, accident, ethnic cleansing,small pox ,large pox, regime change or any other disaster natural to man or beast made that might randomly affect my hitherto unblemished ability to honour my non-existent financial obligation.

So Gupreet cops another (higher decibel) rant castigating him for his obstinate stupidity in pursuing his lunatic sales target. This is duly logged as a second complaint and I sarcastically invite Gupreet to go for the hat-trick – but he declines and 48 hours later a grovelling apology letter arrives promising I will never be sold to or pitched at again - never, ever, ever, for all eternity so help you god.(Yes they were really telling porkies)

Great. Today I get a statement and there’s a curious £50 quid. So I call to query it and speak to (I kid you not) “Jizz”. Jizz offers to send me a form to fill in and is doing really really well until:

“As a valued customer of our organisation I’d like to offer you our very competitive payment protection...........”

Anyway I’ve just broken the scissors, the card is in bits in the bin and Jizz’s supervisor has now cancelled the account and is probably seeking treatment for a burst ear drum.

Why the hell do we do it?

All this bloody country does is recycle cash. Each organisation in turn taking a few crumbs here and there and getting rich on the proceeds and your average man in the street is robbed in the process. Customer services has become an underhand sales department and the 08- numbers generate them profit and cost you money if you have the bravado to call them.

I know that no-one has to get into debt, no one has to be ripped off, but when the constant barrage of marketing and high pressure sales pitches hits the less discerning among us, it’s not hard to see why we’re just a little bit buggered.

I don’t know why this kind of thing incenses me so much – but it bloody does and I make no apologies.

Do you want fries with that Sir?

No. But I'll take the insurance, the admin fees and pay your interest charges because that's a soft sell isn't it?

It's a race to see who goes bust first - the punters wallowing in a pools of debt, or the companies who must surely be on the brink of running out of pointless products to sell to a maxed-out audience.

[Rockrolex]

Your problem, Peter, is that you actually call to complain. That's your first mistake.

I get these "gift" checks from my credit card issuers on at least a monthly basis. More often during peak holiday spending times. I merely toss them in the trash, hoping that some thief will go through the trash, find them and spend the money. Then I will have all kinds of fun telling the issuer where they can stuff their charges for their own consummate stupidity. But that hasn't happened yet.

Guess I'm not as lucky as you.

[roadcarver]

Yup, these CC companies keep sending me invites to go with the low 1.9% credit card offers. I got sick of it one day that I started calling them one by one to take my name off the list.

So far, I have received only one. I've yet to call this other company to do same spiel...

Another occassion, this guy kept calling my house asking to speak to me. He said its Sanjeev. I had a friend named Sanjeev back in the days and I thought he's keeping in touch.

Finally got a chance to call and its a freakin loan lender from Royal Bank in Toronto. He talks as if he knows me blah blah blah. He said he has a great low interest offer to consolidate my debts. I then proceeded to tell him that I don't have any outstanding charges on my credit card and I always pay them off. He congratulated me on it (yeah right - lost commission on his part). So near the end of the conversation, I asked him out of curiosity, what rate were you going to offer?

Check this out... he was going to offer me 22% interest rate to consolidate debts. I said.. WTF?? You think I'm stupid? My line of credit is way less than that. He couldn't say a thing after that. I hung up after that.

Geez...

[Prince]

I shred every offer that arrives in the mail. I have two credit cards - one paid off that I keep as an emergency card - and one that I use to get things (like Rolex watches - heheh) online and other situations where a credit card makes sense, but make HUGE regular payments on it to keep it in line. That's it. They are just wasting paper and postage to send me any offers for other cards.

[mrbieler]

What's credit card debt? That's verboten in our house. If we don't have the cash to pay the bill at the end of the month, we don't buy.

On the other hand, We've used Amex and Marriott credit card points for free flights and hotels on vacations...

I like to collect the constant offers and cut up the cards and paperwork and mail it back to them in their prepaid envelopes.

My CC is part of my mortgage/LOC so the interest rate is unbeatable. I get all sorts of offers of low-interest cards in the mail and when you read the fine print, it usually says that the rate jumps to 22% or more after six months.

I guess they hope people don't read the fine print and then they get hammered on interest charges (assuming they run a balance).

The bank that I have my CC with is always after me to switch my banking to them, and I keep telling them, that if they can offer me no-fee banking (as my current, virtual bank does) then I'll switch. They offer to waive fees for a few months or so, but then back to service charges. They just don't get it.

.

We use cards for many things, but always pay them off each month.

For the many offers we get (usually 3 or 4 a week from MBNA alone ) I usually rip up the documents, remove anything that identifies me, and mail it all back in the postage paid envelope.

[Rodentman]

I don't care what they send me. I shred it. I object to phone calls, and there is only one card that does that and I usually can dust them off. That card is in my wife's name and they always ask for her. I tell them I am she, and that usually ends it.

Also, be aware that the more credit cards you have, even with a 0 balance, the greater exposure you have to going in debt and you have a lower credit score, even if you don't incur said debt.

And get this! Most (US) insurance companies rate you in part on your credit score, and charge you accordingly. I have a credit score over 800, have never made a late payment or bounced a check in my long and miserable life, and yet I do not qualify for the lowest insurance rates. How do I know? They sent me a letter telling me so!

I called my agent and he said he doesn't qualify for the lowest rate either, and doesn't know who would, by their criteria. He also was unable to provide me with a phone # of anyone above him I could call to enquire about it. What a rip off!

And whislst I am on the rant, you think outsourcing customer service is bad, guess where my employer's I.T. support is located? Wrong, not Bangalore, but Hyderabad. So when Oracle takes a dump and I need help there's no one I can go to in the orifice. It's not all that bad, however, our DBA is Indian but works for us in TX.

They are smart guys, I just wish they were in the bldg so I could sit with them and solve the problem a lot faster. It's very frustrating.

[padi56]

Originally Posted by Rodentman

And whislst I am on the rant, you think outsourcing customer service is bad, guess where my employer's I.T. support is located? Wrong, not Bangalore, but Hyderabad. So when Oracle takes a dump and I need help there's no one I can go to in the orifice. It's not all that bad, however, our DBA is Indian but works for us in TX.

They are smart guys, I just wish they were in the bldg so I could sit with them and solve the problem a lot faster. It's very frustrating.

Well talking about call centres,my Sim card in my Mobile phone failed last night.But I normally take up the free offers on line,and had a few orange new Sim's.So new one in follow the instructions IME number on phone etc,ring number then the robot woman starts spouting options 1-5 and so on Then your call is important to us and the usual bullsh!te.Then we are experiencing high volume calls,then you speak to a person who you cannot understand one word they are saying.Someone from India is reading from a script all together just to register a sim to a phone took 38 minutes.

[BruceS]

Don't need that crap. I've gotten myself into deep sheep shite with credit cards before. I use my debit card now. No money no spendy. It's all really crazy. Everyone is trying to keep up with the Jones', and especially in the big cities, everyone is trying to look like they have a ton of money. Hey you want to drive a Jag or a Merc. No problem if you're willing to make the huge monthly payments. Of course you have to have a big fancy house to park it at. Five bedrooms and all that even though you have no bloody kids! Then you have to have the designer label clothes just to remind everyone you have money (which you really don't have 'cause you're in debt up to your neck). And the cc companies just keep sending you the "free" feekin' checks!! Society and culture gone mad.