Tuesday, May 1, 2012

A Nominal Fee

I have to admit that I am really bad when it comes to my credit card bills.  I rarely review all the charges and frequently forget to pay my bills on time.  I usually just pay the balance each month it comes in and don’t think anything of it unless the amount looks way out of whack. 
The other day my husband reminded me that we had received several calls from a credit card company on our voice mail and I hadn’t called them back yet.  I figured out they were just trying to sell me something.  So, last night, I finally called only to find out that what they were calling me about was an unpaid amount of $2.43.  It seems that the last time I paid the bill I didn’t send the correct amount and then I didn’t use the card for a month so I ended up having an overdue amount of $2.43.  The person was quite insistent that I pay this amount right away and offered to take my routing number and account number to pay it over the phone.  I replied that I didn’t feel comfortable with that and asked her to just include the amount on the next month’s bill, but she was so adamant about it, that I finally spoke to a manager and ended getting the amount removed after threatening to cancel the card.
I just can’t believe that they put all that much trouble into such a small amount.  If it had been 10 years ago, I am sure that I would not have gotten this much flack, but now any amount unpaid is a huge inconvenience and has to be rectified even if it’s just $2.  It costs more than that to even write a check these days and doesn’t seem worth the trouble.  I am also sure all of the manpower costs were over $2.43 just to call me and end up arguing about it on the phone.  But I guess they are worrying about the pennies when they should be are worrying about the dollars.

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