Customer service is dead…
Last month, we changed banks and thus checking accounts. We went through the whole fun business of letting everyone that might care know. We went online to pay our credit card bills a week before their due date. I had run them up buying parts for the Defender and were were going to pay them off with the money from insurance. My wife changed our checking info at their respective websites and then paid the bills online. Both of the credit card companies then decided to try to debit the old bank account. CitiBank and Capitol One both did the same dumb-ass thing. I called them both to try to straighten things out.
CitiBank’s head was so far up its ass that I got nowhere in 6 calls over a weeks time. They charged two $29 bounced check fees. Bounces that occurred because they tried to take money from the wrong account. They also charged a $35 late fee because they couldn’t get money from a closed account and instead of notifying us they tried again a few days later, after the due date. Oh, and because of this bullshit they decided we were all of a sudden a ‘bad’ customer and jacked our rate from like 4.9% to 27.99%. You have got to be shitting me. I got them to reverse one whole $29 charge. I told them that’s the last money they’ll make off me, I hope it was worth it. Idiots.
CapOne wasn’t much better. One bounced check fee and a late fee. *sigh* I did get them to reverse those charges after the rep agreed that it was their mistake. This was how things are supposed to work.
I ended up transferring the small balance from the CitiBank card to the CapOne while still on the phone with them and then I called up CitiBank to cancel the card. I told the rep I need to cancel the card. He got some info and said the account is closed. That’s it. He didn’t ask why. No attempt to keep a 15 year customer who never missed a payment and had maybe one late payment in all that time. I asked him if the company wanted to know why. He said I could tell him if I wanted to. I said ‘Why bother? You’re the only one that’ll hear it and that won’t help make change in a company’s stupidity.’
I know we rarely use the cards because we try to pay cash for everything but, still, doesn’t 15 years as a customer count for anything? We only keep our cards around for emergencies and convenience, like online ordering. If you can’t pay cash for it, you probably don’t need it.
: Down To The River To Pray from the album “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” by Allison Krauss