What's in YOUR wallet?

Remember when the "color" of your Credit Card used to mean something? A "Gold" card was something special - supposedly reserved only for those with the best credit. and then they came out with the "Platinum" card which was supposed to be better than "Gold" In practice, these designations have been meaningless for some time. Somehow I got on the Mailing List for "First Premiere Bank". They keep sending me "Gold" card offers. For a $90 "Acceptance Fee", $6/mo "Membership Fee" (billed annually - in advance - of course) and a $59 "Annual fee" (not to be confused with the membership fee), I can get a "Gold" card with a limit of up to $300. Wow. That really is special. When they issue you your first card, you have like $30 left out of that limit thanks to the fees. I get get at least one or two of these offers every month. You would think they would eventually clean out their mailing list.

On to the REAL story:

I am a Capital One "Platinum" cardholder. They recently changed my account to include a $59 annual fee for no apparent reason. Maybe they didn't think I would notice? Anyway, I refused to pay it, so I cancelled my card. Unfortunately, I didn't actually get to speak to a real person when I did this, but I assumed it was all taken care of. A Month Later, I get a bill for the Annual fee. I didn't worry about this because the recording had told me this might happen anyway. ANOTHER month goes buy and I get another bill showing an Annual Fee AND a LATE FEE for not paying the Annual fee in time. So I decided to call again. This time I just kept pressing buttons until I got a REAL person. Because I was such a "GREAT" customer, the service rep was perfectly willing to waive ALL outstanding fees and bring my account back to $0 if I would keep the account open. While midly disturbed by this, In order to get off the phone and get back to my busy blogging schedule, I agreed. I figured it would be easier to do it this way and then close the account later.

Which brings me to the point of this story. When you call them up to cancel your card, they actually have pre-programmed menu choices to say you are cancelling the card because the fees are to high - whereupon someobody comes on the line and offers to waive those fees. This is like the corporate equivalent of panhandling. Apparently their business plan is to assess extra fees and see if anybody notices. The ones that notice and object to it get their fees "waived". Talk about easy money. I wonder how many people just pay the extra fee and don't say a word?

For those of you who have credit cards with an annual fee, call them up and tell them you don't want to pay it any more and see what happens. Post your results here.