I have a fresh rant.
~18 months ago I refurnished my life after leaving my tiresome ex-wife (hereafter TXW 
) and letting her keep substantially all my / our worldy goods. In the course of that I applied for several store-specific or store-branded credit cards who had “0% APR for umpteen months” come-ons. One of which, the subject of this thread, is for an upscale housewares chain. Not Williams-Sonoma but in that league. The folks who buy their overpriced trendy stuff are not poor and probably not poor credit risks either.
Fast forward to last month and the card in question has long since been paid off. It’s not one I use routinely, but I still get X% off at their cash register or website if I use their card, so I’ve kept it open despite using it only ~2x/year.
Fast forward to last month. The retailer announces they’ve got a new card affiliate and they’ll be sending us all a new card. They’ll handle the balance transfer to the new card issuer and after date X the old card (and issuer) is dead; long live the new card (and issuer). A micro-vexation for no apparent benefit to me, but OK; this sort of business turbulence for the sake of business turbulence stuff goes on all the time.
Fast forward to last week-ish. The new card arrives in the mail as advertised and goes live a couple days after that. So I stick it in my wallet to use it a couple times to test it. Likewise stick it in my phone and use it from there a couple times to test it. Works great, yaay! And then when I get the first bill I’ll set up my bank to pay it, and then everything will be in readiness for me ever using it again later. So far so routine, so organized.
Fast forward to this morning. And now comes the start of real vexation. Get their website access set up. Discover that my statement closing date was a couple days ago, so I have one test purchase on a freshly issued statement and the rest will be on the statement that’ll close mid-Nov. A bit awkward, since I’ll have to pay twice, but no matter which date they had picked for the cutover, somebody will have a statement cutoff date right near then. Just happens I’m one of them.
Discover that they’d successfully transferred my zero balance from the old issuer. Hooray for that much!
Also discover the fresh new bill for my one transaction includes $0.39 of interest on a ~$200 purchase made 2 days before statement closing. WTF? A bit more reading of the terms indicates two things. Firstly, they charge 32% APR (!) and secondly, they charge interest from the date of the transaction until paid in full. So I already owe them two whole days of interest. And counting.
There is no no-interest grace period even if you pay the balance in full each month! I have never in my life had a card with terms like that. I know it’s legal, but I’ve never seen it. WTF!!1! Bastards!!1! 
Anyhow, I instruct my bank to pay the entire up to the minute balance, and that’ll take a day or two. Of course this happens close enough to the weekend that it’ll be Monday before the payment arrives even though its electronic, not paper & snail mail. At which point that account is being closed with extreme prejudice.
I wonder several things:
- How much more is this junk-grade issuer paying the retailer than the old junk-grade issuer did to incentivize them to change issuers?
- How many customers will even notice the major change in terms?
- How many of their well-heeled customers will react with outrage as I did, cancel their cards, and rather loudly tell the world what a shit move this retailer just pulled. IMO I’m not shopping there again using their card or any other. Sux to be them.
Enshittification continues apace. Be careful out there; I think we can expect that current politics will pretty well gut what little regulatory protection we are used to receiving against corporate crapola.