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I'm Just A Number
by muaddib at 03:27 AM on July 04, 2002
I got some curious mail yesterday: Two separate bills from my credit card company. I pay my bill online, so (regrettably) I have not made much of a habit of actually opening the paper bills they mail me. There are, I suppose, potential downsides to my Internet dependence. For instance, I haven't actually opened a statement from my bank in, oh, five years. This kind of thing can cause problems, it seems. Who knew?
Anyway, two bills on the same day was odd enough that I went ahead and opened both. The one was, as I expected, my Gold card (remind me sometime to go on a rant about how utterly stupid Gold cards are when they hand them out to everyone - even me!). Yes, there's the payment I made (online) three weeks ago. I see that the finance charge put me right at the limit again. Best make sure I make another when I get paid on Friday so they don't rape me assess an overlimit fee.
So, that settled, I really wondered what the other one was. It was a bill for my Platinum card. It listed a US$59 previous balance and one charge: A late fee. Just one problem: I don't have a Platinum card (side note for abovementioned future rant: Platinum cards only exist because everyone and his dog has a Gold card now so they needed to create something else vaguely more exclusive sounding to justify charging a $59 "membership fee" for a friggin' charge card).
So I call them up. I punch in the number off the bill and am told the card has not yet been activated. Huge Internet-induced Fear Number One is now more or less ameliorated: I have not been the object of identity theft (actually, I pity the poor slob who does decide to steal my identity - with my crushing student loan debt, my credit rating isn't worth the time and trouble it would take to pull off the heist).
So, it turns out that even though I don't remember applying for it and never actually received it, I do have a Platinum card. Now what? I certainly wasn't suffering any feelings of inadequacy when I didn't know I had one. What to do? Well (within limits, learned the hard way) more credit is better than less. Hey! I can use it to get my ticket and hotel room for BlogCon. "Ok," I tell the nice young woman who desperately wants to rip me off sell me credit insurance, "I'll keep the account. But I've never received the card and I certainly don't want to pay a late fee for a card I didn't even know I had."
They're only too happy to credit the fee back to me. I'm a sucker, see? I have just agreed to pay their "membership fee" so I can have a piece of silver plastic in my pocket. In the end, she cancelled that account and opened a new one, promising I'd receive a new card in a week or so.
Now I can't help but wonder if it would be fun to use the one to pay the bill for the other, and then back the other way, for a few months just for the joy of using their money to pay them. But they'd win in the end, so I guess I'll just use it for the trip to Vegas and spend the next 500 years paying it off (like the other one).
comments (6)
I have five credit cards which have inexplicably been given complimentary upgrades to platinum status, not that they upped my limits any. I guess they just wanted me to feel more exclusive.
Can't wait to see what tier of exclusivity they'll invent next. I'd kind of like a rhodium card, but I'm not holding my breath.
by Antwon at July 4, 2002 6:37 AM
I hear tell that AMEX has a Black card - reserved on an invitation-only basis for the truly exclusive (i.e., people rich and powerful enough for AMEX to have taken actual notice they exist).
by Muad'Dib at July 4, 2002 4:58 PM
The AMEX Black card does, in fact, exist. I knew a kid in college who had one. I wish that was a joke, but its not.
by Adam at July 5, 2002 7:39 PM
Like ODB and Dr. Dre black, or turtle-neck black?
by mg at July 5, 2002 10:07 PM
Yeah, my old boss went out one day and bought an Acura NSX with his black card. A friggin' CAR, I tell ya.
Yes, it's funny - both of my Mastercards are now "Platinum." It seems the only requirement is that you pay off your balance each month. I never carry a balance, yet they still keep raising my credit limit ecvery month. It's like, "well if that didn't tempt you - how about this?" Crazy-ass banks. I swear, one of these days I might just max these things out and go live for 10 years in South America or something - that's my backup plan.
My AMEX got bumped up to platinum status recently - I think only because I was waiting on a divadend check from my old retirement plan, so I charged all these travel plans and everything to that card, several thoudand bucks. I guess they assumed I was a "big spender" now, though I just used the check to pay it off. Haha, jokes on them I guess. The weird thing is it came with all these memberships like automatic upgrades on American and freebies at LHW hotels. I mean, if someone is wealthy, do they need all these discounts? They keep the rich richer and the poor middle-class schlubs are stuck paying full-price. Seems unfair.
by Charles at July 6, 2002 2:35 AM
Personally, I do not feel you are "rich" if you are living on plastic. I do feel you maybe "well to do" if you live on plastic but never owe on the plastic. Charging and then paying in full before the bill hits your "inbox" would indicate as such. I have credit cards both gold/silver that I do not use much, I do not like to have bills for items that had I had the cash to pay for I would have done so but did not do so because I wanted it NOW. I use them as back up in case I have an emergency, sure, but I never just "use" them per se for items that I do not need. I think the Credit card industry has helped make this economy shit, handing out credit to people who do not even hold a job, raising credit limits to people who only pay the expected payment per month and so on. I also feel that one only needs one (or two) major credit cards and one gas card, thats it, anything else and you are losing your own money rather than saving it. But again, thats just my opinion. :-)
by Pristine at July 8, 2002 12:32 AM