This is one reason why I avoid web mail. I prefer pop3 where the mail only sits on the server for a short time, and is then pulled down to my own system.
Plus your local ISP's pop server is not a high-profile target like Hot mail, making it far less likely to come under attack.
My AAA Financial Services card was great, 12.9%/No Annual Fee/No late charges/no telemarketers.
But it was managed by PNC, and the sold it to MBNA as the poster above mentions.
As for the rest of the cards I have, none of them are great. I like my AT&T Universal Mastercard because of the calling card feature, but I think that got sold to Citibank.
In short credit cards in general are a scam. Should you own any... yes, you need them for some things, but don't carry a balance when you can help it. But they have all sorts of dirty tricks to make you pay more...
I once paid off a student loan (using their payoff figure), and received a letter telling me that I still owed them 3 cents, and it was written like "it's really important that you pay this balance".
I didn't actually pay it, and never heard from them again. Guess they realized that it was costing them more than 3 cents to send letters like that.
Still, had they been a credit card company I'm sure that they would have charged me late fees and reported it to the credit agencies.
I find it ironic that you can apply for a credit card online, but if you want to prevent the bank from sharing your unlisted telephone line with greedy telemarketers, you must SNAIL MAIL them.
And I'll bet that they use the lead time between when you sign up and when they receive your letter to sell your name to those greedy telemarketers, too
I called up and they took care of it right away, taking the deliquent payment off my credit record and removing the 150$ in fees that had accumulated.
I sure hope that you checked your credit reports, they may have said bad things about you which could come back to bite you if you go for a mortgage or something
I guess you also don't have an employer that sometimes sends you to NYC and puts you up in $300 and $400 per night hotels... Which they'll reimburse you for, but won't give you an Amex card becuase you don't travel enough.:-( And it also takes them awhile to process the reimbursment.
And I suppose that you've also never had an unexpected situation like having a car break down, and need expensive repairs, and you have no choice but to use your credit card to fix it because you need the car to get to work, and don't have the cash on hand for the repairs.
A. You lose interest on your money when it's removed immediately.
The going rate these days for interest bearing accounts is about 3% or less. Credit Cards often charge 21-24%. I'd rather lose the 3% than pay the 24%.
3. Companies should have a do not promote feature, USE IT. This prevents the company from forwarding your name/address/phone to telemarketers. Once again, do this my mail.
Unfortunatly, it is usually the credit card company, or at least they are doing it in the name of the CC company ("Hi, I'm Pam calling from Citibank...") doing the telemarketing, not third party telemarketers, I don't know how such a feature would affect this.
1. Never end a conversation with customer service regarding late fees like the situation above without speaking to a supervisor.
I actually did this with Capital One, the supervisor refused to remove the charge, even though the late balance was only $1.57
I used to bank at a bank called Merchant's Bank which got bought out by First Fidelity (which later merged to form First Union). After FF took over, fees went up, conveniences were lost. I eventually left for a different bank (Corestates). Guess what? FU bought them too. I moved out of the state just before that happened though.
I've never dealt directly with FU (except for a Student Loan), but friends and family still do, and many of them are switching to other banks because they hate it.
I have never and will never pay it. Just don't use the cards to spend money you don't have.
That's what debit cards are for. I don't use my credit cards anymore now that I'm out of college and make enough not to, but I still have the balances I ran up during college, and I'm working to pay them off.
I agree the telemarketer harassment sounds pretty crappy. But not everybody does that, I don't think I've ever gotten an unsolicited call from my card companies.
You're lucky. I took the day off from work yesterday, and had two of them!
If you are still not convinced, here are two more things that Credit Card companies do that irritate me:
1) They modify their agreements (terms of use) anytime they feel like at, and despite the name, you don't have to agree.
2) With some, if you close the account, they'll raise your rate on your remaining balance. Some will even charge you a fee for closing the account!
They both took the $29 off as a "courtesy", but only after I paid it -- so I got a $29 credit on both.
I've had credit cards do this for me as well. I tried to get the $25 dropped for the $1.57 incident, they refused. This was Capital One bank BTW. They did eventually drop the whole $50 after I closed the account. But the aggrivation they put me through leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
so now I have two cards at 9.9%. I just called up and complained and threatened to cancel my card.
You should always have one real credit card for car rentals. You don't want to know what kind of s*it you get put through if you try to rent a car with a Visa debit card.
What kind? I've used a debit card to rent them before (A mastercard, but it should make no difference) I didn't run into trouble.
Well I do pay most of them electronically, now that my bank (BankBoston) allows you to do this from Linux (via 128-bit strong Netscape)
They do electronic funds transfer with some of my cards, however there are a few that they don't have set up, and I think if you pay these online, BankBoston snail mails the payment to them. I'd rather mail it myself than wait for the bank to do it.
HA! That will change! All my "low 12.9% APR" cards eventually changed hands (banks merged or sold their cards to other banks/institutions) and the interest rates went up to 21% or more.
The last thing I want is another credit card, I don't care if it has Tux on it or not. I am sick of dealing with the credit card companies.
It's not bad enough that many of them charge over 21% interest, if your payment shows up a day late (thanks to the postal service), BANG! $25 Late charge. I once had a card with a balance of $1.57, I paid a little late, and they charged a $25 late charge. I called them and complained, I got another bill stating that the late charges were up to $50! They charged a late charge on the late charge even though it 1) wasn't yet late. 2) The original balance was paid.
They will constantly try to get you to buy "credit protection" which is nothing more than a scheme to increase your balance each month, since the interest + the cost of the protection will often be greater than the minimum payment.
If you have cards, you are guaranteed to constantly get harassing phone calls with offers that are supposedly too good to be true. Tell them that you aren't interested, they keep on, hang up on them, and they call back saying "Sorry sir, there must've been a problem with the line."
You think you are being smart and get a "low interest" rate card ( = 12% ). Guess what? Sooner or later the bank that issued the card will either sell it or merge with another bank, and your interest will go up. My wife had a card that went from 12% up to 24% because of this.
Yes, the Oakland incident was blown out of proportion, however even before that I have seen ebonics advocates try to spread the notion that ebonics was the natural way for blacks to speak, and we should just accept it.
However even with many of the other English dialects you mention, the speakers have the same problem, if they don't learn to drop it, at least in formal situations (job interview or whatever), they won't go very far.
Up here in Bahs-tuhn (Boston) people take classes to learn to drop that regional accent for the same reason.
So anyway, I guess my point is that it bothers me to see things like ebonics advocated that will only futher hold back the blacks in this country. If it's used as a teaching tool, that's great.
It's not politically correct for whites to have a community. If Blacks or Hispanics or Asians choose to have communities or organizations made up of their race only, they are praised for embracing their people. If whites do the same they are labelled as racist.
In recent years there has been a real effort to get rid of male-only educational institutions by integrating them, while leaving female-only institutions intact.
My Wife is a feminist, and she attended a Woman's college. When I asked why this is fair, she tells me it's because in a male-only school, the men bind together and discuss how to oppress women.
Really?
Now my wife is generally an intelligent woman, but she's been brainwashed by this stuff
Here's another. Michael Jackson gets paid more money to endorse a pair of sneakers than entire FACTORIES of women in Asia get paid to make them. Did he work for that money?
Well what else should he call it? I mean it's politically correct to say "black community", isn't it? What is the politically correct way to refer to white people collectivly? whether you (meaning you) see it or not, there is a implication of ethnocentristic superiority built into this wording.
Whether you see it or not, there is an Orwellian, New-Speak type mentality built into that type of thinking.
Well what else should he call it? I mean it's politically correct to say "black community", isn't it? What is the politically correct way to refer to white people collectivly? whether you (meaning you) see it or not, there is a implication of ethnocentristic superiority built into this wording.
Well gee, I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!
And punish them for making bad decisions? Now that is a nanny state! More like a preacher state, actually. I hope you never make a bad decision.
Where in my post do I say that? Bad decisions are usually their own punishment. Do you like the idea of somebody snorting your tax money up their nose? I don't. I'd rather pay for rehab.
3.) your perpetuation of the "white community" idea and its superiority over a black community for not using certain colloquialisms (sic).
Where did he say that? He said that there are some in the black community who criticize other blacks for trying to suceed. This is true. An "Oreo" is a person who is accused of being black on the outside, but white on the inside, the other two terms are different ways of saying the same thing.
But it seems that you can't even try discuss racial problems at any real depth because people like you will automatically jump in and label them a bigot.
Slashdot Mirror
This is one reason why I avoid web mail. I prefer pop3 where the mail only sits on the server for a short time, and is then pulled down to my own system.
Plus your local ISP's pop server is not a high-profile target like Hot mail, making it far less likely to come under attack.
My AAA Financial Services card was great, 12.9%/No Annual Fee/No late charges/no telemarketers.
But it was managed by PNC, and the sold it to MBNA as the poster above mentions.
As for the rest of the cards I have, none of them are great. I like my AT&T Universal Mastercard because of the calling card feature, but I think that got sold to Citibank.
In short credit cards in general are a scam. Should you own any... yes, you need them for some things, but don't carry a balance when you can help it. But they have all sorts of dirty tricks to make you pay more...
I once paid off a student loan (using their payoff figure), and received a letter telling me that I still owed them 3 cents, and it was written like "it's really important that you pay this balance".
I didn't actually pay it, and never heard from them again. Guess they realized that it was costing them more than 3 cents to send letters like that.
Still, had they been a credit card company I'm sure that they would have charged me late fees and reported it to the credit agencies.
The sad thing is, if you use your Linux card to buy MS products, Bill will earn more money from the transaction than the Linux fund will!
And I'll bet that they use the lead time between when you sign up and when they receive your letter to sell your name to those greedy telemarketers, too
For one, my parents didn't have money, so I couldn't call them everytime I needed some cash, like many of my fellow students did.
For another, I had a car that broke down a few times, I needed to get to work, but didn't have enough cash to fix it, so I had to charge it.
I sure hope that you checked your credit reports, they may have said bad things about you which could come back to bite you if you go for a mortgage or something
I guess you also don't have an employer that sometimes sends you to NYC and puts you up in $300 and $400 per night hotels... Which they'll reimburse you for, but won't give you an Amex card becuase you don't travel enough. :-( And it also takes them awhile to process the reimbursment.
And I suppose that you've also never had an unexpected situation like having a car break down, and need expensive repairs, and you have no choice but to use your credit card to fix it because you need the car to get to work, and don't have the cash on hand for the repairs.
I had a card through AAA (using PNC bank). It was great, 12.9%, no telemarketers, no annual fee, even no late payments!
But... They just sold their operation to guess who? MBNA. I just got a new modified *agreement*. (Gotta love that), and the BS has begun.
The going rate these days for interest bearing accounts is about 3% or less. Credit Cards often charge 21-24%. I'd rather lose the 3% than pay the 24%.
Unfortunatly, it is usually the credit card company, or at least they are doing it in the name of the CC company ("Hi, I'm Pam calling from Citibank...") doing the telemarketing, not third party telemarketers, I don't know how such a feature would affect this.
1. Never end a conversation with customer service regarding late fees like the situation above without speaking to a supervisor.
I actually did this with Capital One, the supervisor refused to remove the charge, even though the late balance was only $1.57
I used to bank at a bank called Merchant's Bank which got bought out by First Fidelity (which later merged to form First Union). After FF took over, fees went up, conveniences were lost. I eventually left for a different bank (Corestates). Guess what? FU bought them too. I moved out of the state just before that happened though.
I've never dealt directly with FU (except for a Student Loan), but friends and family still do, and many of them are switching to other banks because they hate it.
That's what debit cards are for. I don't use my credit cards anymore now that I'm out of college and make enough not to, but I still have the balances I ran up during college, and I'm working to pay them off.
I agree the telemarketer harassment sounds pretty crappy. But not everybody does that, I don't think I've ever gotten an unsolicited call from my card companies.You're lucky. I took the day off from work yesterday, and had two of them!
If you are still not convinced, here are two more things that Credit Card companies do that irritate me:
1) They modify their agreements (terms of use) anytime they feel like at, and despite the name, you don't have to agree.
2) With some, if you close the account, they'll raise your rate on your remaining balance. Some will even charge you a fee for closing the account!
I've had credit cards do this for me as well. I tried to get the $25 dropped for the $1.57 incident, they refused. This was Capital One bank BTW. They did eventually drop the whole $50 after I closed the account. But the aggrivation they put me through leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
so now I have two cards at 9.9%. I just called up and complained and threatened to cancel my card.
Why'd you complain about that?
What kind? I've used a debit card to rent them before (A mastercard, but it should make no difference) I didn't run into trouble.
Well I do pay most of them electronically, now that my bank (BankBoston) allows you to do this from Linux (via 128-bit strong Netscape)
They do electronic funds transfer with some of my cards, however there are a few that they don't have set up, and I think if you pay these online, BankBoston snail mails the payment to them. I'd rather mail it myself than wait for the bank to do it.
HA! That will change! All my "low 12.9% APR" cards eventually changed hands (banks merged or sold their cards to other banks/institutions) and the interest rates went up to 21% or more.
The last thing I want is another credit card, I don't care if it has Tux on it or not. I am sick of dealing with the credit card companies.
It's not bad enough that many of them charge over 21% interest, if your payment shows up a day late (thanks to the postal service), BANG! $25 Late charge. I once had a card with a balance of $1.57, I paid a little late, and they charged a $25 late charge. I called them and complained, I got another bill stating that the late charges were up to $50! They charged a late charge on the late charge even though it 1) wasn't yet late. 2) The original balance was paid.
They will constantly try to get you to buy "credit protection" which is nothing more than a scheme to increase your balance each month, since the interest + the cost of the protection will often be greater than the minimum payment.
If you have cards, you are guaranteed to constantly get harassing phone calls with offers that are supposedly too good to be true. Tell them that you aren't interested, they keep on, hang up on them, and they call back saying "Sorry sir, there must've been a problem with the line."
You think you are being smart and get a "low interest" rate card ( = 12% ). Guess what? Sooner or later the bank that issued the card will either sell it or merge with another bank, and your interest will go up. My wife had a card that went from 12% up to 24% because of this.
Yes, the Oakland incident was blown out of proportion, however even before that I have seen ebonics advocates try to spread the notion that ebonics was the natural way for blacks to speak, and we should just accept it.
However even with many of the other English dialects you mention, the speakers have the same problem, if they don't learn to drop it, at least in formal situations (job interview or whatever), they won't go very far.
Up here in Bahs-tuhn (Boston) people take classes to learn to drop that regional accent for the same reason.
So anyway, I guess my point is that it bothers me to see things like ebonics advocated that will only futher hold back the blacks in this country. If it's used as a teaching tool, that's great.
In recent years there has been a real effort to get rid of male-only educational institutions by integrating them, while leaving female-only institutions intact.
My Wife is a feminist, and she attended a Woman's college. When I asked why this is fair, she tells me it's because in a male-only school, the men bind together and discuss how to oppress women.
Really?
Now my wife is generally an intelligent woman, but she's been brainwashed by this stuff
Um, I think you meant Michael Jordan? ;-)
Whether you see it or not, there is an Orwellian, New-Speak type mentality built into that type of thinking.
Well gee, I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition!
a preacher state, actually. I hope you never make a bad decision.
Where in my post do I say that? Bad decisions are usually their own punishment. Do you like the idea of somebody snorting your tax money up their nose? I don't. I'd rather pay for rehab.
Where did he say that? He said that there are some in the black community who criticize other blacks for trying to suceed. This is true. An "Oreo" is a person who is accused of being black on the outside, but white on the inside, the other two terms are different ways of saying the same thing.
But it seems that you can't even try discuss racial problems at any real depth because people like you will automatically jump in and label them a bigot.