I cash every single one of those they send to me. If you read the fine print, they always either give you a free month or a refund on the first month if you cancel within 30 days. I just wait for the informational pamphlet to come, and call up and cancel immediately. I get to have fun conversations like this
Me: I’d like to cancel this extra service thingy.
Them: May I ask you why you want to cancel.
Me: I’d prefer not to say
Them: Would you be interested if we lowered the cost to a lower, but still absurd number?
Me: No, but if you want to send me another check, I’ll try it for another free month.
Opening the envelope, finding the number, and making the call usually takes a total of 5 minutes. $8 in 5 minutes isn’t bad at all. Plus I get the satisfaction of minorly screwing over the credit card company.
This reminds me of the phone company wars back in the early 90s. Sprint and MCI were challenging AT&T for long-distance service, and they would send out these $50 or even $100 checks. Endorsing the checks gave them permission to switch you to their long-distance phone service.
I must have cashed a dozen of those checks over a 3-4 year period. Being young and single (and in college and then the Navy), I moved a lot, so my phone number changed a lot–so they never appeared to catch on the fact that I had no loyalty whatsoever to any particular company.
Once I got two $100 checks from different companies in the same month, one from AT&T, asking me to switch to them, and one from Sprint. For the record, that month I was getting long-distance service from AT&T. Lord knows why AT&T was asking me to switch to them when I already was using them for long distance.
I deposited both checks, of course. I’ve no idea what long-distance company I would have ended up with, since I was moving the next month anyway.
I got a call from my credit card company a couple of months ago. “May I ask why you haven’t activated your credit card protection insurance?” she asked.
I admit, the imperious natrue of the question threw me for a second. I guess you’re supposed to stammer and say, “Well, I don’t know,” giving her a chance to convince you to buy it. But unfortunately for her, I had an answer.
“Well, the reason is this: Your insurance costs $49 a year, right?”
“Yes, but–” she started going on about the offer. I cut her off in mid sentence. Rude, I know, but telemarketers are trained to keep going.
“Well, according to federal law, I can only be held responsible for $50 in fradulent charges and that’s only if I didn’t cancel my card within a certain period of time, right?”
" . . .Right."
“So, I can spend $49 dollars a year in case my card gets stolen, at which point I would come out one dollar ahead.”
“Okay, thank you. Have a nice day,” she said and ended the call. I guess their reply sheet didn’t have lines for those who understand consumer protection laws.
The fact that they managed to interest you enough to read it surely places you in the highest echelons of stupidity. Even the merely clueless know enough to toss such crap without wasting time reading it, let alone doing math based on the numbers, and posting about it on a message board. Looks plenty stupid to me.
That’s a bit oversimplified, Waverly. It’s not outside the realms of possibility that the marketing types can find a way to legally make the offer an opt-out proposition. Reading enough to ensure that this was not the case is caution, not stupidity.
And then, having dedicated that much time and energy to it, analyzing the offer and posting about it is called “sharing.”
As I mentioned above, this was an offer from a company we have a card with. We have few cards, so we read all of the offers they send us - perhaps one or two a month. No big deal.
