Daily Roundup: Credit Card Flips and Free College Lectures
Published on - October 4th, 2007 (by J.D. Roth) I had lunch with a good friend today. Over Chinese food, we talked about personal finance. (Surprisingly, this isn’t a hot topic in my social circle.) We discussed the lure of new cars, and the virtues of buying used. We talked about the drawbacks of trading up from a small home to a large home. And we pondered what sorts of investments we ought to make in the coming years. I write about personal finance all the time, but it felt good to actually have a conversation about the subject.
Here are some of the personal finance stories I’ve been following lately. First up, Julie wrote with a word of warning:
Macy’s flipped my store card and sold my data to Citibank so they could issue me a Mastercard. I got a Citi card in the mail, ready to be activiated, and thought that I was a victim of identity theft. So I cancelled the card. I called called Citi to report the problem, and they informed me that it was due to my inactive Macy’s card that the new credit card was created.
Sounds slimy to me. It sounds slimy to The Consumerist, too. They have a whole exposé on the incident, which affected 3.5 million customers!
Elsewhere, Marketwatch has launched its Community section, which attempts to bring social networking aspects to financial news. You can tag and rate stories, leave comments, and attempt to predict the performance of various investment options.
Finally, here are two great sources for free educational material:
- Librarian Chick has a collection of links to educational resources. This is a huge list.
- Jimmy R compiled a list of 177 free UC-Berkeley courses available for free on video. (I like the fact that mp3s are available, as well.)
Both of these lists are excellent if you’re into self-education.
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I guess that explains why I mysteriously got a Citibank MasterCard in the mail the other day. I called and canceled it right away, but I didn’t know why it was sent to me (and the number on the letter sent with the card didn’t lead me to a human being at all). The interest rate on the card was ridiculous–after a 3-month 0% financing grace period, the financing charge ramped up to 23%! No thank you!
The other times that stores have flipped inactive cards on me, they’ve at least sent me a letter to let me know that it’s going to happen. This is pretty sleazy, and I feel bad for anyone who didn’t read the fine print.
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M.I.T. also has free lectures for download, though I don’t have the link to hand on this computer.
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@nd: I am not sure why you care what the finance charge was. You should never care about the finance charge and pay in full all your credit cards with an APR above 0%
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MIT: http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/av/index.htm
They have a ton, some (not most) with video lectures
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Justin-Don’t be a jerk. If for some reason nd couldn’t pay off his/her card all at once, it IS nice to know what the APR is just in case. I know that I try to pay off my cc every month, but if I can’t, I don’t want to be charged 23% when I can get a card that has a 7.9% APR.
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What concerns me most about Macy’s flipping inactive accounts is that they have no reason to believe that their information (such as billing address) are still current. What percentage of their inactive card-holders moved in the last 24 – 48 months and didn’t think to notify Macy’s? I would think that a person could take legal action against Macy’s and/or Citibank if they sent a card to an old address and someone else started using it.
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Bank of America did something similar to me recently – I used to have a Visa credit card with them but decided to stop using it. I never cancelled it, but I see the balance ($0) every time I log in to their site to do my banking, so I keep an eye on it. One day I logged in and that account is suddenly no longer BofA Visa but “Bank of America American Express”. Huh? Sure enough I got a new Amex card in the mail a couple weeks later. Then a second credit account appeared, that I never got a card for. (Yes I should call the bank and clear this up.) Funny stuff, no? I need to join a credit union.
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Living debt-free does take some getting used to, but cutting your purchases to match your income does help. Putting a nest egg together with the money one was paying toward the credit cards also helps. Sock away as much in your pension (if applicable) as you can.
When people pay off their credit card balance in full, the banks hate them with a passion. They call such people “deadbeats” because the banks make no money from them directly.
Deadbeats of the world, unite!
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I had something similar but different happen recently with Lane Bryant, a plus-sized women’s clothing chain. I had one of their credit cards – which could be used at the mall store, the outlet store, the website and the catalogue website (the outlet and catalogue being separate entities to some degree; the catalogue now goes by the name “Woman Within”) – and I recently got a new one in the mail. However, “based on my spending habits” (admittedly the majority of my purchases are from the catalogue, but I do sometimes use the card at the stores), they switched me to a “Woman Within” card that can only be used at the catalogue website. I called customer service to complain and they claim the only way to get the multi-service card again is to go to the mall store and apply for a new one – they can’t switch me back; I have no options or say in the matter. Needless to say I’ve written a very angry letter.
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I got a letter from Macy’s about the whole “flip to Citibank” thing. My solution? I bought a pair of underwear. The letter clearly stated that all I had to do to avoid being flipped was to use my credit card. So I did, for $3.99. Now I have a reminder set to pop up in 23 months to do it again. I’m determined to cost that company as much money as I can while spending as little as I can now. It’s my oldest credit card – I opened it the day I turned 18 to start establishing credit. I’ve used it a handful of times over the past 10 years but I’ve never carried a balance. I sure wasn’t going to let them do anything that would be detrimental to my credit though. I’m glad I didn’t go with my first impulse to throw the letter away.
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Bloomie’s opened an account on my behalf with VISA, which I still have to cancel. Grr, makes me so mad!
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What really gets me are when they offer to help you save “10% on today’s purchase” by opening an account. Sometimes if there is no one behind me, I’ll explain why that’s generally a very bad idea. I then tell them that unless its a condition of their employment, they should stop offering to ruin people’s credit rating.
Sounds harsh, but I don’t know how to make the relationship more transparent for them.
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Especially annoying because closing card accounts changes your average length of credit statistic that is a component of your credit scores.
I check all my credit card fine print each month (which is a pain.) It turns out that my “Free” American Express card that I got only because of my retirement funds will start charging me a fee next July. If I hadn’t scanned to the end of that letter, I wouldn’t now be planning to cancel that card before I’m locked into another year.
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[...] to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!Earlier this month, Julie warned us that Macy’s had flipped her store card and sold her data to Citibank. I recently experienced something [...]
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