Now, I’m Pissed
I got my first credit card right after high school, and I was so excited, it had a crappy limit, but at least I could afford to have a few things for my dorm. I had a store card before, but my first major credit card was a Discover card. These days money’s not so tight, I am married now, and I don’t really use credit cards much anymore (I’m in debt enough owning a home, I don’t need a credit card company breathing down my neck). Lately, people that call into my job have been complaining about Discover card and their horrible customer service. Today, I got a little taste of my own.
I don’t have a $ 20,000 limit or anything, but there is a LOT of room (comparatively) on my card. I got a message today from the woman who was working the comic book stand in the lobby of the movie theater where I saw Spider-man on Friday. She said my credit card had declined. I’m thinking are you crazy? The shirt was $16, type it in again. But she says it was declined, so, I call Discover. I get this guy appropriately named Dick, he says I owe them $90.96 from last month and they decline everyone who is past due no matter what.
First let me start by saying, if I had received the bill, I would have paid the bill, but I only use my Discover card when I go to Sam’s Club and I don’t even remember going there recently (turns out it was on March 16th, yeah I remember that, wouldn’t you?). Second, the alleged bill was due May 5th; it’s not like it was weeks over due, it was barely days over due. Enough “past due” that they already accessed a late fee of $15, but they can’t spot me $16 for a t-shirt? They know where I live. I own the house, it’s not like I’m going anywhere. Even so, I’m not past due thousands of dollars and trying to buy a car with the damn card, I allegedly owe $90 and I haven’t even seen the bill. But to make matters worse, Dick, as he is so aptly named, suggests I go to www.discovercard.com and set myself a reminder e-mail so I don’t forget to pay again. He is lucky there was a telephone and theoretically thousands of miles between us because if we’d been face to face, he’d have swallowed that receiver. Set myself a reminder? How ’bout you remind yourself to bill me or the psychos at the Post Office to deliver it? I pay my bills on time every month and that counts for nothing; they just “dick” you around because they can.
Screw Discover card, who needs them anyway? They should worry about getting accepted in more stores before they worry about declining long time customer’s purchases. Writing this blog just makes me hope the old addage is true: the average satisfied customer will tell 5 people, the average dissatisfied customer will tell 20 people or more. You guys already know and once I tell my co-workers I’m above average for once. At least one good thing came out of this nonsense.
The icing on the cake of this whole debacle is, when I actually go to www.discovercard.com, I view my statement and decide to fill out the on line customer service form. Can’t hurt, right? Wrong. I type the whole thing out and hit submit, and I get an error message that says I was inactive for too long and they logged me out for my protection. Inactive? I was typing a tirade. My fingers were moving a mile a minute. Never fear, I was expecting to get screwed, and I’m not stupid, so I copied it before I sent it. This time, I win.
December 21st, 2003 at 7:29 pm
No on get Discover card. I had a Discover Platinum for a while. It was my first Platinum card. My credit was great. Then I got laid off from work, you know when the economy dropped and alot of other construction workers got laid off also. Anyway, I called them and told them that I would need a little assistance with the bill, they said no I would need to have a consumer credit assistance program help, but since I just told them if I really struggled I could pay it I don’t qualify, because that’s for people who cannot pay it. I said well I take back the statement and she said it was too late. I paid a portion of the bill and paid the rest the next week. They raised my insterest rate to %19.99 percent and charged me a late fee and reported negatively to my credit agency. The amount they were charging me on my finance changes were higher than the minimum payment due, so with the finance change and the late fee my balance was even higher next month. I managed to pay it. Still out of work, two months later I asked them for assistance. This time I said I couldn’t pay. They told me that I would have to pay this protection plan fee for a month and then I would get help. The protection fee came to over 75.00 dollars, they raised my interest rate to 24.99% charged another late fee and lowered my credit rate once for the late payment and again for getting help. I told them, “Basically, you wait until your long term customers are down, and insteat of helping them to get back on their feet you kick them off a cliff”. I was able to pay my minimum payment for the next four months, but with the ridiculous interest rate, my balance had doubled. Now with my balance above the credit limit (mind you I haven’t purchased anything with the card in the last 6 months), they are charging me an over limit fee of $35, a late fee of $35, and finance charge or $172. My balance is not endlessly climbing, my credit score is endlessly dropping and the one month I couldn’t pay the credit manager told me, “Well, I’ll talk to you next month.” very arrogantly and hung up on me. I’ve been paying them over $170 every month and my balance is just climbing (even though I’m not using the card). My credit is pathetic and all because of Discover card and a small period of financial difficulty. My parents went through the same things and took a loan out on the house to pay it off. With the balance gone they decided to tack on another overlimit fee and huge finance charge for old times sake. DO NOT GET A DISCOVER CARD. THEY ARE THE BLOODSUCKING VAMPIRES OF THE CREDIT CARD INDUSTRY!