If you don’t already know it, take note: Going online to get annual credit reports is amazingly easy and fast.
The site to visit is Annual Credit Report.com, because it does not try to sign you up for any gimmicks or paid recurring reports. You get what you order here, with no hassles and no sales pitches.
You can order reports from any or all of the three major credit bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. They don’t give you your credit rating (though you can purchase it for a nominal fee), but they do signal any problems.
Because each credit bureau is required to provide one free credit report per year to consumers, it’s a good idea to set up a calendar reminder to hit one bureau every three months, giving you an ongoing record instead of one annual picture.
However, each bureau is a little different; they don’t all have identical data. I was concerned enough about the late, great Macy’s fiasco that I wanted to be sure no black blot was lurking on my records, especially since one’s car and homeowner’s insurance rates can be affected by negative credit reports. If I decide to buy a car, even though I pay in cash I don’t need whatever extra hassles or charges might ensue from any negative items, so I decided to order all three reports this time.
TransUnion was the only bureau that disgorged a detailed report for me. Equifax and Experian produced one-page summaries, and I couldn’t see any way to get in and see a full report. The summaries, though, sufficed, because they both reported no negative items.
At any rate, it’s extremely easy. Where in the past you had to fill out three separate online forms and enter a lot of data, now you fill out one form at Annual Credit Report.com plus answers to a few identifying questions at each site, and voilà!
Well. At least it’s nice and quiet at four in the morning. Except for Sheriff Joe’s ubiquitous helicopters, which use the skies over our neighborhood as an aerial freeway.
Update: This all turned out for the best. A Macy’s supervisor took charge, figured out why their statements had never reached my house, untangled the mess, and accepted payment for the original bill. It remains to be seen whether the collection bureau, which has an unsavory reputation, will actually be called off. But for the nonce, things look brighter.
§§§
Yesterday I pick up the mail and open what looks like some official correspondence or possibly a long-awaited check from Google Adsense, which sends payment in envelopes like the one in hand, with no clear return address. And what should I find but a threat from a collection agency!
Say what?
They claim I owe Macy’s $91.
I have no clue what this is about, since I don’t ordinarily shop in Macy’s, because it’s too far away, it’s an unpleasant store to navigate, and it’s generally overpriced. I call Macy’s and spend a good hour wending my way through punch-a-button mazes. Finally one factotum claims I made a purchase last September for $28. I point out that’s a far cry from $91, and if I made any such purchase, why does the account number on the bill collector’s statement not jibe with the account number on the credit card they sent me, which was never activated? She has no clue, either.
Finally, while I’m listening to obnoxious sounds and waiting for yet another clueless soul with a Bangladeshi accent to come on the phone, I sift through several months’ worth of Excel entries and discover that indeed, in September I bought a bargain purse for $28. Now I remember! It was one of those girls-on-the-town shopping adventures. Among several strategies that La Maya and I used to drive the price down from about $90 was to agree to open a Macy’s charge account for 10 percent off—hence the presence, in my file drawer, of the unactivated card.
Macy’s never sent a statement. I recall noticing that the bill hadn’t cleared after the first month, but then as my Excel spreadsheet turned into an endless roll of toilet paper, the uncleared line fell out of sight and it simply slipped my mind.
Not one statement is in the file, and I am quite certain no statement ever landed in my mailbox.
M’hijito suggested that I probably didn’t recognize their bills and tossed them in the recycling bin with the flood of unwelcome junkmail that the USPS dumps into my mailbox. That certainly is a possibility. But I doubt it: I’ve been around for more than a day or two, and I do know what first-class mail looks like. Unless Macy’s sends its bills at bulk-mail rates, it’s highly unlikely I would have missed six statements.
No. The only explanation is that they didn’t send a statement and so, since my bill-paying is triggered by the arrival of statements, I failed to notice the outstanding charge.
Hmmm…. Interestingly, I don’t seem to have been the only one to experience what appears to be a Macy’s scam to extract interest and late fees from unsuspecting customers. We have this endless Facebook exchange, in which a woman describes exactly the same experience and one commenter remarks,
For anyone claiming that this is not a scam, they’re out of their mind. This is absolutely a scam to create late payment fees on behalf of Macy’s. Yes, as an employee you can explain it well and yes, as a credit card user, you can eliminate the problem by being aware of what the account is and how it works, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a scam. Macy’s purposely makes it very easy to lose track of a small balance that is due in order to tack on a large fee. It’s a classic shady business technique/scam. Just like when a company asks you to sign up for a “FREE” rewards service or some other set-up that is free for a month, but then requires you to cancel the $9.99 or $19.99 that starts billing every month. Sure, you can cancel it, but most companies who operate this type of shady practice make it difficult to find a phone number to cancel, or they bill it under a name that doesn’t look familiar to you and if you’re not paying close attention to your credit card bills each month, you can end up getting billed several months for something you never intended to sign up for in the first place.
Other people have described similar behavior and said it damaged their credit rating. Macy’s also has another scam, whereby when they issue you a credit card through one of their 10% off schemes, they’re actually issuing you two credit cards, one of which you don’t know about. One is a regular store account and one is an AMEX account. Since they no more bother to tell you this than they bother to send you statements, if you go to your online site to check your balance, you will think it’s zero, because the real balance appears in an account about which you are kept in the dark.
Well, I guess I’m going to have to pay the bastards. But you can be sure I’ll never buy another piece of junk at a Macy’s store again.
The annual rebate from Costco’s American Express arrived late last week. It was only $157, the lowest kickback I’ve ever received from that august credit card company. Compare with last year’s refund of $337, and the $210 they sent in 2009. Pretty pathetic.
Of course, what it says is that in 2010 I cut spending way, way back. The only major purchase I made was for M’hijito’s dryer—since he pays for everything in cash, we charged it on my card and he reimbursed me so I could get the kickback. If it hadn’t been for that purchase, the rebate would have been even less.
In one respect the small check is not so disappointing: it means I succeeded in cutting my budget to unheard-of low levels. Of course, that happened because I had to cut back: I had no money.
Like everyone else, evidently. Spending dropped drastically across the country as more and more Americans fell victim to layoffs, forced “retirements,” furloughs, and pay cuts. Reports tell us we’ve seen a recent uptick in consumer spending, with an increase of 4.4 percent in fourth-quarter 2010. That’s good for the economy, I guess. One could speculate about pent-up need, though: at some point along the line people simply have replace cars that crap out and household infrastructure items that break—such as M’hijito’s clothes dryer. As experience tells us, all these things are engineered to break at once. Will people keep on buying after they’ve replaced the things they can’t do without?
Oh well. I could’ve used a larger kickback. On the other hand, a couple of other windfalls blew in: the RASL payment and a couple of new jobs from new and old clients. So, what the heck. I’ve learned to limit spending, and don’t expect to increase it for the sheer joy of seeing a few extra pennies in the annual AMEX rebate.
How about you? Now that you’ve tightened your belt, do you intend to loosen spending if and when times get better, or will you continue to cultivate your new frugal habits?
The other day Five-Cent Nickel sent an alert to the effect that he was posting a very interesting graphic on the changes you’ll be seeing in your credit-card statements now that the new law has gone into effect. It’s quite a creation, built on information from the federal government.
My AMEX bill came a few days ago. It took me a minute to figure it out—Nickel’s graphic with its mouse-over captions could be very helpful to the complication-impaired among us. But right up at the top is the “Minimum Payment Warning,” explaining in no uncertain terms what will happen if you just let your balance float.
If I made only the minimum payment on the $864.17 due and never charged up another penny, it would take eight years to pay this month’s bill! And the privilege would cost me about $1,456 in interest. The annual percentage rate for this loan is a usurious 15.24%, and an even more criminal 25.24% for a cash advance.
Well, if that doesn’t get your attention, nothing will.
Those of us who are long in the tooth have known these factoids for a long time. But maybe forcing the credit companies to explain, quite literally up front, what a credit-card balance really means will forestall having so many young people end up in debt they can’t handle.
Because I pay my bill in full every month, not only do I not owe AMEX anything, it owes me $77.17 toward this year’s annual rebate.
Interestingly, the busy design of the statement makes it difficult to follow. AMEX has installed a ditzy, squirrelly background inside textboxes that present this information. The account summary, for example, is typed directly against this hectic pattern, small black figures against a dizzying gray background. The law must require credit-card issuers to print the minimum payment warning clearly, because that section lacks the eyeball-spinning textbox fill. But many other key pieces of information are obscured by this graphic device: the amount of the late fee, the account summary, the credit limit, available credit, cash advance limit and available credit, the days in the billing period. And, most tellingly, the customer service number.
At least now the customer service number, hard to read though it may be, is on the front page of the darned statement. Before this you had to sift through the fine print on the backs of several pages to find a number to call.
This is an improvement. The fact that the credit card company is doing its best to make it difficult to figure out suggests just how big an improvement it is for me and you.
Every now and again, the credit union sends out a mass e-mailing to lobby members to ask elected representatives to vote this way or that on matters that affect credit unions in specific and banking in general. Normally I think yup yup yup! what’s good for my credit union is good enough for me and do as I’m told. This time, though, they’re asking us to weigh in on the “interchange legislation” that is part of the new financial regulatory reform act.
And I’m not so sure.
We’re told in the e-mail:
A new amendment under consideration by legislators will benefit merchants and soon you could be paying more to use your debit and credit cards. Merchants are asking legislators to reduce their fair share of the cost of the card payment system.
If they are successful, merchants will:
• Dictate which debit and credit cards they will accept and where they will be accepted
• Limit your ability to choose your preferred payment methods
• Be allowed to set minimum and maximum amounts for credit card purchases
• These changes could result in higher costs at checkout, and fewer rewards and benefits for your debit or credit card. You can protect your preferred method of payment by acting now!
Oh. Eeek. I’m afraid. I’m very afraid.
This bit of slippery-slope logic led me to wonder what on earth they’re going on about, so I hit the link to the boilerplate they would like us to send to our legislators. Here, the proverbial plot thickens.
Here we’re told that the new legislation would include “a provision that would mandate price controls on the interchange fees paid by merchants for accepting debit cards. This bill has unintended consequences for credit union members and every consumer with a debit card in his or her wallet.”
Price controls on “interchange fees“… What we’re talking about here is the amount that retailers have to pay for the privilege of letting you and me rack up our purchases on credit and debit cards. This can be a significant zing. The charges vary from card to card, which is one reason that a lot of vendors won’t accept American Express…it’s mighty expensive.
Agreements with all the major credit-card purveyors forbid merchants from offering a discount to customers who pay in cash. That’s one of the things the lobbyists who want you to write to your legislator are exercised about.
Soooo… At this site, you can broadcast your pro-banker opinions to any and all of your federal representatives using any or all of the following boilerplate:
As a constituent and a credit union member, I am writing to urge you to oppose inclusion of the Senate-passed interchange provision in the final financial reform bill. This provision will have unintended consequences for credit union members like me and every consumer with a debit card in his or her wallet. It has not been thoroughly studied and does not belong in this bill.
Merchants receive tremendous benefits when they choose to accept debit and credit cards as a form of payment. They are paid immediately, and they do not have to deal with cash or wait for a check to clear. Like electricity or rent, the interchange fee that the merchant pays is a cost of doing business. Government rate controls on interchange reduce the merchants’ responsibility to pay for the benefits received from the card payment system and will drive up costs for credit unions and their members.
My credit union incurs significant expenses in operating its card payment system. For example, my credit union is responsible for administration of card programs, customer call centers, and reissuing cards in cases of merchant fraud. Interchange supports these costs. If interchange fees were reduced, my credit union and other small financial institutions would be forced to raise rates and fees for card services. My credit union might even have to curtail debit and credit card services for members, and that might force me to move my account to a big bank that offers cards at a higher price. Furthermore, there is no evidence to suggest that merchants would pass along any savings resulting from lower interchange to consumers.
This provision offers no real “exemption” or “carve-out” for credit unions; if it were included, merchants and big banks would set rates that would make it impossible for my credit union to compete. In the end, merchants could refuse to accept the credit union debit card I rely on for everyday purchases.
The interchange provision requires a more thorough review and does not belong in this bill. I urge you to oppose its inclusion in the final financial reform bill and hope you will ask conferees to keep this provision out of this bill.
The little red arrows are widgets that allow you as the “author” of the legislator spam to choose whichever paragraph you choose.
Soooo… The question is this: Is what’s good for my credit union good for me? And you?Should there be no cap on the amount banks are allowed to require merchants to pay just because their customers think it’s handy and dandy to rack up debt on credit cards and overcharges on debit cards? (Or not: some of us don’t charge up more than we have in the bank in any given month…but still!). Why should a merchant have to pay for our convenience, especially when the purveyor of our convenience is making a freaking ton of money off of us?
And what happens when your grocer, your toy store, your veterinarian, your clothing shop has to pay Visa, MasterCard, or American Express so that you can use Visa, MasterCard’s, and American Express’s startlingly profitable plastic?
Oh, yes: we do know what happens. The cost gets passed along to you and me! Everything we buy from retailers across the nation and around the world costs more because we’re paying the surcharge in the form of higher prices at the checkout stand.
Well.
If the Safeway gave me a discount for buying a week’s groceries in cash, I would cheerfully break out a fistful of dollars or write a check. If Chuck’s Auto Service, the premier car mechanics in central Phoenix, would exempt me from interchange fees if I paid cash, I would be mighty happy.
All right. All right. Debit and credit cards are very handy, and I admit to using my AMEX card because it is just downright convenient. I don’t like to carry cash around—having been robbed once, I know I can’t collect for lost cash from an insurance policy, and I know my losses from a stolen credit card are capped at $50. Very nice. And I do hate dorking around with writing a check and jumping through the merchant’s check-cashing hoops every time I make a purchase.
What about that kickback I’m getting from Costco’s American Express card? It amounts to 3 percent for gasoline charges, 3 percent for restaurant bills, 2 percent for travel costs, and 1 percent for everything else. Well, I hardly ever go out to eat (which means instead of a 3 percent kickback for food, I only get 1 percent), and I never travel. So it wouldn’t harm me to pay cash for restaurant meals and grocery bills, especially if I got a 1 to 3 percent discount for doing so. Because paying cash at a gas station is a hassle, I’d probably still charge gasoline, unless the cash discount were significantly more than 3 percent.
But if this legislation puts credit card issuers out of business (why do I think it won’t?), do I care? Will my world end if I have to write a check or pay with actual dollars for everything? Well, in a word, “no.”
No x 2.
How do you feel about this matter? Do you think credit card issuers should be allowed to continue the status quo? Is there a difference between debit and credit cards issued through credit unions and those issued through banks? If so, what is it?
American Express has emitted this year’s rebate: $334 back in my pocket! Took it direct to the credit union after having cashed the voucher at Costco.
Despite the new regime of penury, I decided to try to continue putting $200 a month into a savings account for indulgences and emergencies. This will jack the $400 accrued in January and February up to $734.
I do hope that American Express doesn’t pull the widely favored stunt of instituting an annual fee. I doubt that they will, because this card doubles as a Costco membership card. I think it’s more likely that they’ll get their pound of flesh by persuading Costco to raise membership fees and then kick the increase back to AMEX.
If they put an annual fee on the charge card itself, then I’ll drop it. If they increase the Costco membership…hmmm. That’s another matter. I do almost all my shopping at Costco. It’s extremely convenient, the gas is cheaper than anyplace else around, and the meat is very high in quality. Plus they sell a brand of jeans that actually fit around my capacious rear end.
All of which could be said to fall under the heading of “cutting off your nose to spite your face.” Why would you drop a rebate card that returns $300 or $400 because the lender starts soaking you for $15? It is kind of stupid, isn’t it…
Well, it’s the principle of the thing: we’re already paying for these cards in the form of increased prices, since the banks charge retailers a stiff transaction fee for the privilege of taking payment in the form of a credit card. The cost is passed along to every consumer, whether or not that consumer pays with a card.
So I think the banks are earning quite enough without adding an extra gouge. If they want to charge users a fee for carrying a piece of plastic around, then they need to remove the transaction fee levied against retailers.
For the nonce, though, money has just happened. And I’m glad enough for that.
