I was credited for one disputed charge in a month the other’s weren’t that big a deal as I worked it out with the other party. I had to fill out the paperwork and they got right on it. The only problem with that is that it does reflect upon your actual cash but my bank seems to treat it much like they would a credit card account.
As for “credit” when using a debit. My card is a Visa debit card so when I use it at the grocery, a store, on line, to buy gas, whatever, as far as the merchant is concerned, it’s a Visa. If you put “debit” in say a self serve thing or even at the merchant’s place (they have those new terminals) it still debits your account but often you have to enter your PIN and it’s considered a debit card then.
In either case, as long as I don’t use the PIN option, it reads it as a Visa card. Pretty nifty. My best friend got out about $70 back last year by using it that way…same bank but I must have thrown out the notice.
If that were all that happened then I’d be fine with it. But that’s not what happens. Yes the account is activated or whatever but the credit monkeys also use their shot at what is essentially a captive audience to try to sell more products and services. “Credit protection”? I already told you I don’t want it. Magazines? No thanks. Whatever else you’re selling? Go away. It pisses me off that the company manufactures required contacts and then markets at me at a time when I’m calling only because they made me. If their motives are so pure then instead of trying to sell me things they should ask if I want to be contacted, marketed to, etc. instead of assuming that I want to hear about their exciting new crap. What pisses me off even more is when I’m calling them for some customer service reason (say, they declined a charge for no reason or didn’t credit a payment for which I have the cancelled check) and try to sell me stuff then! Uh, excuse me, I wouldn’t be talking to you at all if you hadn’t fucked up, what in the name of God’s little green apples made you think this would be a good time to ask me for more money?
The reason we have you call to activate the card is not a “manufactured” contact. Nowdays, mail theft/non received cards and convenience checks is a huge fraud area. If the customer calls in from the home phone number on file, we know they received the card. We are a business and want to protect our assets, after all.
As for the selling, I can’t speak for the customer service reps. From what I understand, they are not supposed to push the crap if the caller is obviously upset. Some probably still do, and you have every right to call them stupid, but not all.
And I applaud you and other companies who take steps to protect consumers and your assets (and since I work for a phone company which by necessity does most of its business over the phone I won’t even throw stones about the notion that someone turning in a fraudulent credit card app can easily put down their own home telephone number since we have our own problems combatting fraud). But come on, this IS a manufactured contact. The credit card industry has decided that it will activate accounts by having the consumer call in, and the pinheads in Marketing decided that they would take this manufactured contact that the customer is forced to do if s/he wants to use the account and use it to try to push more crap. I don’t care if companies want to use customer service contacts as a way to push product. What pisses me off is the assumption that people don’t mind it and that it’s OK to sell stuff without asking first. Ask me as part of the activation call if I want to be on the marketing list; make it an opt-in, not an opt-out.
IIRC the very first time I ever got a new credit card in the mail which had one of those “call to activate this card” stickers on it, after going through the authorization protocol the prerecorded message informed me that credit protection (and possibly other offers) were available, and said that if I was interested in further information I should press “1” to be connected to a salesperson. I had the option of terminating the call without having to talk to anyone. Now, after being told that my card has been authorized I am immediately connected to someone who starts in with the sales pitch.
I recently opened a new account expressly to take advantage of a no interest for one year balance transfer option, which I used to pay off some unplanned-for garage repairs. A week or so after opening the account, I received a call from a customer service rep, who pointed out that I still had available credit which I draw on as part of the offer and was rather pushy about insisting that I had to have some use for the extra money. When I indicated that I did not wish to discuss the matter at that time because my wife was in the hospital, this bitch actually had the nerve to suggest that I should draw on the extra credit because “you’re probably going to need the money for medical bills”. I showed admirable self-restraint and simply hung up at that point.
