Banks !!!!

[Jim Koepke]

Yes, an acquiring bank needs to honor a contract that is written in a way that it can't be discarded. But what I was referring to was "negotiation"...not likely going to happen successfully for the consumer.

One of my credit cards with a major bank had an interest rate on the high end. A call to them about all the offers arriving in the mail offering a better rate for transferred accounts got them to lower my rate. The lower rate was only good for six months. So every six months another call to them got me back to the lower rate. After about two years of this the representative said the rate could not be lowered again. The next day my account was changed to a bank offering a low rate. This bank has not tried to raise my rate. We currently still have that credit card and the balance owed is at zero.

Though there always seems to be a problem with banks. The bank for our credit card transposed the oe to eo in our last name on my wife's card. We never noticed this. One day a very sharp eyed cashier did. We have "please ask for ID" written on the back of our cards. This is one of the few cashiers that actually payed attention to what is written on the back of the card. It took over a year and about five attempts to get this corrected. The crazy part was on the day it finally took place was when a new computer system was being purchased. While sitting on a bench outside of the store as they were putting my purchase together, my wife called and told me the bank decided the way to correct the problem was to close the account and transfer the balance to a new account. She was on another line with the bank and told them of my charge at the computer store. Everything was in order so we closed the account and were going to receive our new cards in a few days. After hanging up, the sales person came out of the store to tell me they made a mistake on the invoice and would need to run it through again. After telling them of my credit card woes and that if they wanted to make the sale they would have to make the original invoice work. It was amazing how quickly my new system came out of the store on a hand truck and was loaded into my car within about twenty minutes.

jtk