Just Cut It Up

My wife ( the lovely and talented Marquita) is always right. Even when I don't want to admit it immediately, her correctness will strike like a kick in the pants a few days later.

She says credit cards are evil. Not surprisingly, I have had not one but two horrific exchanges with credit card companies in the last 48 hours.

The first one involved an APR leap of almost ten percentage points from one statement to the next because of a bogus federal tax lien floated on my credit report. I really shouldn't care about the APR, because I rarely carry a balance on this card subject to a finance charge, but my good name had been assaulted!

After a few calls to a few people, the problem was rectified and my APR was actually reduced to a lower figure than before the big snafu. I guess that constitutes a happy ending.

Today, I forgot a newly assigned password to a business card account online access site. My bad - shoulda written the new password down somewhere. Tried to get some help from a customer service rep. He didn't sound like he was from around these parts. I got transferred to someone named Annette that tried to "help". Instead, the conversation became extremely accusatorial on her part and I got blamed for 9/11, Katrina, and all the great plagues of Europe. She deactivated my account.

Whoa...

I fretted for a while, sought counsel from a wise friend of mine, then called the credit card company again. This time I got handed off to a gentleman named Tim who listened to my story and agreed that Annette was a little hasty in her judgement and action. He got the problem solved - found my password and reactivated the account. Another happy ending.

All this grief, of course, could have been totally avoided by paying in cash. You're right again, dear...