WAS MY FACE RED

My husband and my son are both into financial counselling. My son even has a diploma to show for it and had a TV show that also addressed debt counselling services, which ran for one season. In his TV show, my son was very emphatic about making people more aware of the cost of using their credit cards, especially when they choose to prolong the repayment period.

This is the reason why in our household, we are very careful about the use of credit services by way of credit cards or any other debt financial instruments. My husband is a believer in the dictum that if you cannot pay for something in cash, then do not buy it, or save up for it until such a time when you can. Don’t get suckered into buying something on impulse, which you may just regret later down the line.

The only time when I can freely use a credit card is when we are travelling abroad as my husband also did not believe in carrying a lot of cash. We do have credit cards issued by our bank under one of the more popular global credit service companies. Before we leave for our trip, we would inform the card company that we will be abroad, the dates when we will be away and the country or countries that we would be visiting. We also made sure that there were no outstanding charges on the card and that our credit limit is up to the maximum allowed. Therefore, having done all these due diligence, I went shopping one whole afternoon at a retail store in the San Francisco Bay Area. Because I am not of the ideal size, I had to spend a lot of time and effort trying on clothes. At the end of the day, just before the store closed, I toted my cart to the Cashier and she started ringing up my purchases.

This took quite some time as my cart was full of not only clothes but also a lot of food and non-food items. After she hit the total button, I handed her my credit card. She tried to register the charges but the card kept being rejected. Finally, in frustration, she asked me if I had another card. Of course, I did not have another card and told her so. I asked her what was wrong. She said the credit service company was not accepting my purchases. I told her that I had just used the card the day before and it was OK. She snapped back to say “But not today!” The line behind me was getting longer and I was starting to hear snide remarks from the people behind. Some of the things said were downright insulting! I had to tell the girl that I had no other means to pay for my purchases and if she could just reverse the charges, got my card back and left the store vowing to get even with the credit service company. My shopping was curtailed for the rest of the trip.

When we got back home, the very first thing I did was to contact the card company to ask them why my card was rejected. I almost hit the roof when I was told that “there was something electronically wrong” with the series of numbers that my card belonged to. I battled the card company for two years, threatening to bring them to court over the embarrassment and opportunity loss of being unable to shop abroad. My husband and my son kept telling me to give it up as the credit service company will not admit their fault.

After a lot of hemming and hawing and waiting until the matter was reviewed all the way up to the office of the president, I got my way – the cash equivalent of a roundtrip ticket to San Francisco, California! Early in the negotiations, I received offers of brand new home appliances, a camera, etc which offers only made me pursue my suit as it must have merit, otherwise, I will not have these offers.

The point of my story is you can take issue with a big credit service company if you just stick to your guns and not be afraid. I know I did! In addition, I won!  

(Note: This is a Fictional Story and meant to be humorous. But it could and probably has happened to someone.... When you have credit woes it is no laughing matter!) From the staff of  www.CreditDisasters.com