I am a stinky credit card customer, the kind of selfish lout who will snap it out at the sight of a bar code yet think nothing of abusing the natural laws of plastic.
I pay my Visa bills on time. No interest, no monthly credit balances, no APR.
I am so ashamed.
There was a time when such behavior was considered a virtue, a sign of maturity, responsibility and level-headedness.
But recently the credit card lords, who raised instant gratification to the status of a virtual American birthright, have emitted audible grumbles about ingrate customers.
Some, they complain, sign up for cards but rarely use them. Even worse are sneaky souls such as myself who take full advantage of card convenience but then shirk their responsibility to run up debts and interest penalties.
In what could foreshadow a trend, a handful of card firms even have begun tacking on fees to penalize the delinquents who fail to charge much or to keep an unpaid balance.
Oddly though, about the same time that the saber rattling began, my family mailbox started filling up with what would become an avalanche of unsolicited credit offers.
It seems odd that companies are lavishing such bounty on the very kind of customer who causes them such grief. This, after all, is the age of unrelenting market research, when every consumer tick and fetish gets logged in industry databanks.
But there they are. Letters proudly announcing that I’ve been “pre-approved” for silver cards, gold cards, platinum cards–could aluminum, manganese, titanium, kryptonite and zinc be far behind?
In a single month, my wife and I were the recipients of 25 unsolicited credit card offers–an average of about one in every day’s mail.
Ameritech yearned to impart its Complete Card, “a completely different kind of credit card,” with a starting interest rate of only 6.9 percent and a 1 percent rebate on all purchases.
Not to be outdone, rival AT&T offered the Universal Card–no annual fee, 5.9 percent APR and a $25,000 credit line.
Some of the most intriguing offers came from outfits of which I’d never heard. First USA Bank of Wilmington, Del., and Providian Bancorp of Manchester, N.H., both offered platinum cards with credit lines up to $100,000. I could add a wing to my house.
Menards, the hardware superstore with the chipper TV pitchman most viewers would love to smack in the chops with a weed-whacker, offered its Big Card and the promise of Big Savings. Even the bean counters at L.L. Bean pre-approved me for their special Outdoor Advantage card. Don’t leave for the woods without it.
General Electric, a pioneer in the charge-’em-extra-if-they-pay-on-time phenomenon, didn’t merely send a card offer but sent the card itself. All we needed to do was call a toll-free number and have it activated.
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Moreover, the company’s literature proudly declared: “You have been upgraded to a GE Select Gold Card,” something of a surprise because I never had possessed any kind of GE card from which to be upgraded.
Citibank’s solicitation wasn’t the most generous, but the fine print made for arresting reading: “We calculate the variable Annual Percentage Rate by adding 5.4 percent (for silver Citibank by adding 9.4 percent) to the U.S. Prime Rate published in The Wall Street Journal on the third Tuesday of March, June, September and December of each year. If the third Tuesday is a holiday, we will use the Prime Rate published the next day. If more than one Prime Rate is published, we may choose the highest rate. If The Wall Street Journal ceases publication . . .”
High finance, to me, often seems counterintuitive. Nothing cheers the stock market like a really lousy jobs report. And fiscal analysts live and die by government studies that, in rapid-fire order, warn of too much consumer debt or too little consumer spending.
I’m sure there’s some clever business strategy behind the frenzy of credit card offers beating down my mailbox door.
Maybe there is some critical mass of credit card seductions that even the most frugal of customers cannot resist. Maybe I will break down, forget about living within my means, and splurge. A new wing could be nice.
Still, there may be more profit potential in soliciting those folks with somewhat spottier credit histories, even if of late they have been trying to mend their ways.
Say, for example, the occupant at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. “Dear William Jefferson Clinton . . . You have been pre-approved for our new Cubic Zirconium MasterCard with balance transfer option and credit line of up to $6 trillion. . . .”