Shortly after opening an account with my local bank, I began receiving several letters per month with things like “Important Account Information, Please Open Immediately” or “Important Records Information” printed on the front of the envelope.
Of course, I always opened them right away, concerned that there might be something amiss with my account. Nope. They were all pitches for either Life Insurance, Credit Protection schemes or some other scammy products. They were most certainly NOT “Important Account Information” and had NOTHING AT ALL to do with my account. The notations on the envelopes were bald-faced LIES.
Not to make your head blow up more, but Consumer Reports published a compilation book once of their inside back cover feature that had LOTS of examples of this, mostly from car dealerships (RECALL stamp on the envelope, when the dealership wanted to “recall” the addressee’s attention to their most recent promotion). And this book was published in the early 00’s.
That shit drives me crazy. My bank and credit cards send me so much crap it’s hard to keep track of anything that might be useful. They have very effectively conditioned me to ignore everything they send, because very bit of it is tree wasting crap.
I resolved this problem by discarding anything that looks the slightest bit important. Then I realized I didn’t want any junk mail either, so I took out the bottom panel of my mailbox and put a wastepaper basket underneath. Now, I may be sitting here in the dark with no heat or water, and okay, I’m told I’m about to be evicted, but I don’t care, because I won.
Do you use my bank? They pull this shit all the time. Every few months they also send me a stack of “checks” that draw on my credit card account. How convenient! :rolleyes:
I had this same thing happen to me except it was a can of Pepsi Max! Seriously, Pepsi sent out cans of pop to people registered mail. I had to rearrange my schedule to get to the post office to pick up what I thought was an important letter only to find out it was a marketing ploy to send me a can of pop.
F’ing bastards, still makes me mad to think about! :mad:
Some of us feel we shouldn’t be obligated to go through a hundred unrequested advertisments disguised as business letters in order to find a single genuine business letter.
Yeah I know this type of shit has been going on a long time, but I really thought it was mainly the realm of sleazy places like used car dealerships.
When I first opened the account, I felt pretty good about the bank. It’s a local chain, and I just a nice experience opening the account and all. I used to recommend them to friends. Now I detest them.
Ok, call me naive for going “duh, gee I guess banks are scoundrels” (well, I dont have a mortgage so i’ve never been bent over by one), but it really took quite a while for me to realize just how sleazy this is. The text on the outside of the envelope is a LIE. My bank is fucking lying to me, right out in the open.
I called them and told them to stop sending me this crap. I pointed out how the letters are bald faced lies. They acted offended but promised to “opt me out of the service”. Service???
Yeah, me too. Of course, I never actually get my bill from Chase, so if I forget to pay I get to get on the phone and tell them I’m cancelling, then they fix the late fee.
The problem, of course, is that you might then miss, for example, a notice telling you that your APR on your credit card balance has been increased from 8.99% to 24.99%. You can actually opt out of an increase like this (although you will have to close the card), but generally have to do so within a specified amount of time, usually 30 days. If you chuck out all your notices, you can miss important account information.
I think there should be laws about how banks are allowed to address notices like this. If a notice is actually about a change to your existing account, they should say so; if it’s nothing but a message trying to upsell you on some service or another, they should not be allowed to label it “Important Account Information.”
I also think, as i said recently in this post, that there should be laws that require any rate increase (or other adverse condition added to a credit agreement) to be announced in large, red type, in plain language, at the top of the correspondence.
I have two credit cards, one with BOA and one with Citi. Between the two of them, I am not joking when I say I get a stack of checks (marked as “Important Account Information”) every few DAYS.
I get all that stuff, but I much prefer the more personal credit protection offers from my bank, that I get on the phone. I have charming conversations every day of the week, between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., from people who are my new best friends and always ask how I’m doing!
I always gently interrupt when they take a breath to advise since I am now being stuck with an annual fee for my credit card, if they want more money from me, they are sadly mistaken.
Occasionally we’ll get letters that say “important information about your mortgage!!!111” from random addresses. Usually some sleazy used-car-dealer-ish finance company wanting us to refinance through them at terms that would look great if we had the financial acuity of my 15 year old son.
THEN we started getting letters like that from WELLS FARGO.
Since we, well, have a mortgage with them, we can’t just shred anything with their address, dammit.
But no, it’s used-car-salesmanship at its worst. Not so much refinancing the primary mortgage, but the home equity line of credit - which we have through our credit union.
I really loathe this junkmail masquerading as something I give a fuck about. “WARNING!!! Overpayment notice!!!” Assholes. Now they’ve even started sending their spam crap in those opaque, “security” envelopes, with official-looking stuff on them like “Warning: This letter is intended for the recipient only. Tampering with this letter is a violation of US Code…blah blah” – of course, tampering with any mail is also a violation, but they try desperately to get some legitimacy by pointing it out as if this letter is special.
My mother-in-law got so terrified by these “Warning! Mrs Doe is paying too much for her mortgage!” that she ended up paying her mortgage two months in advance, out of sheer terror that they were going to take her house away, even though the letters had just been mortgage spam. It cause her significant financial hardship.
We really need legislation that junkmail has to look like junkmail.
I see you got that letter too. Mine has always been a bit high, but for the last year or two, every month it would go up by .5% or so and stuck at 19%. I didn’t much care as I almost always paid it off. Then last week I got the letter saying it was going up to 25%, and could go as high as 30% :eek: So I got pissed and called. I asked why it was going up so much and the woman said, “I see you pay your account off every month so it will not matter to you.” Then she said “This is to better help our customers.”
I’ve still got a couple of weeks to decide, the problem is I’ve had this card for 16+ years, the longest I’ve had a card, and I think I only have one other, and that one might not even work any more. Load of bullshit it is.
I used to get those checks from my credit card companies (Discover and Chase) until I called and requested that they stop doing so. Since then I’ve gone paperless with both accounts, and the only mail I get from them is notices about changes in my account and occasional letters from Discover about special cashback bonus offers.
Wells Fargo, however, is starting to get on my nerves. They keep calling me to try to sell me life insurance and other things I’m not interested in, as well as send me letters about refinancing my mortgage with them.
Not only do I get letters like this, but every now and then I’ll get a phone call with pretty much the same opening. Some automated voice says some garbage like, “Stay on the line for important account information,” only to try and sell me a credit card. At least I can hang up on them though. It’s much more irritating to have to grap an armful of mail out of the mailbox only to have one or two letters not be junkmail. Donkey-raping bastards. Perhaps there should be a Do Not Mail list.