Congratulations, You've Been Upgraded

[TromboneAl]

I'm tired of this type of corporate-speak, which is essentially lying.

We get new credit cards from BofA with a letter saying "Congratulations. As a valued Bank of Americal customer, your account is being upgraded to the World MasterCard credit card..."

Now instead of a credit limit of $25,000, we have "no preset spending limit for additional spending flexibility," which I understand to simply be an undisclosed credit limit.

I called to say "Thanks for the great upgrade, but we'd like to stay with the current system." But of course it doesn't work that way.

Fine, they want to make a change, why don't they just say "we are making a change in your account." Why do they have to lie and pretend that it's benefiting us?

I wonder if there's anyway to work with some super small bank that doesn't work this way?

[W2R]

More credit card aggravation. Sorry to hear this is happening to folks.

[rescueme]

Quote:

Originally Posted by TromboneAl Why do they have to lie and pretend that it's benefiting us?

Because they can?

[Zero]

Similar thing happened with my United Visa card at Chase, they just sent me a letter with a new (uglier) card and said "you got upgraded". For the life of me I could not see any change in the card except the name. It went from Gold Card to Signature.

I preferred the Gold Card. Nope, Chase was not offering it.

So in reality, same deal as Al, they tried to self-flagellate themselves and try to con me. Not happy with that style.

[MasterBlaster]

The three great lies augmented...

"Of course I'll respect you in the morning"

"The check is in the mail"

"We're from the government, and we are here to help you"

augmented with...

"Congratulations, We are improving your account"

[52andout]

check into your local credit union, often you can join if you live in the county. The ones around me offer simple reward credit cards with no fee and calling up and saying "I want a xxx limit" works.

[JJPIES60]

I got one from Wells Fargo that said someone was trying to access my account, so for security reasons, they upgraded my account from Gold to Platinum and increased the credit limit. Hmmm...

[GregLee]

Sometime in the last year I got an offer from Discover card to replace my card with a designer picture card of my choice. No extra charge. I picked a butterfly picture for me and a horse picture for my wife. The colors are rather gaudy, but they liven up my wallet. Fun.

[growing_older]

I got "upgraded" at my grocery store this week. The checker gave me a new membership card and told me all the benefits, which are pretty much the same as the current program you need to get the sale prices. I wonder if they are preparing to "downgrade" all the people not moved into the new program.

[Amethyst]

Our Sears card is also being "upgraded" to a Master Card (we already have a better MC, with 1% cash back, which we use on rare occasions when Penfed VISA is not accepted).

Does anyone know if the so-called "upgrading" has any impact on one's credit rating? Does the clock re-start on the account, lowering the average age of all accounts? I would rather cancel the Sears card (which is not very old) than drag down our rating.

Amethyst

[ronin]

We can get a Lakers debit card. My wife wants it. What do I care? How pliable am I that anything a bank card company does would change my financial habits? What do I care what they do?

[FreeAtLast]

I have a no fee Amex card which gives me some bonus or cash back based on usage. I have a debit visa with my credit union checking which pays a rate of 2% on my checking account balance and a debit mastercard with a local community bank checking account that pays a bit of interest each month.

The credit union I use for all my daily expenses. The community bank I use for anything that might be a tax deductible event. I use the Amex for major purchases/repairs.

[Leonidas]

The card issuers are desperate to find new ways to skin us since Congress yanked on their leash a little.

I haven't gotten the full-blown upgrade yet, but I got a zillion offers to add a business/commercial card. Stumped me for a bit until I learned that the small business cards are exempt from the recently added restrictions.

The other sneaky thing they have been doing is jacking up my available credit. I went on an appliance buying spree recently while remodeling the kitchen. Before I bought the last appliance I decided to double check and make sure it wouldn't put me over limit on the card I was using. Not a problem, the little sneaks had almost doubled my limit. Same for all but one of the other cards.

[Amethyst]

Leonidas, why is raising your credit limit bad? I tend to see raising my limit as a not-very-useful compliment to my credit worthiness. Useless, because the only thing we'd buy that costs as much as the limit would be a car, yet a car dealer won't accept a credit card because the bank would charge the seller a big fee.

We did earn $200+ by putting our kitchen renovation bills on the PFCU Visa, but we made those purchases over several months, so the limit was never approached.

Amethyst

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leonidas T The other sneaky thing they have been doing is jacking up my available credit. I went on an appliance buying spree recently while remodeling the kitchen. Before I bought the last appliance I decided to double check and make sure it wouldn't put me over limit on the card I was using. Not a problem, the little sneaks had almost doubled my limit. Same for all but one of the other cards.

[Zero]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ronin We can get a Lakers debit card. My wife wants it. What do I care? How pliable am I that anything a bank card company does would change my financial habits? What do I care what they do?

The bank may "upgrade" you to a Bulls card!

[ronin]

After the last 4 games, it's a definite downgrade. Playoffs can't arrive a minute too soon !

[mickeyd]

On our recent Panama Canal cruise we were actually upgraded by the cruise line. Instead of having our cabin on the "A deck" we were housed on the Main deck, one story above. Not sure how this benefited us as both had the same view out of the window, only one of them was about 10 feet higher up.

[RAE]

Quote:

Originally Posted by 52andout check into your local credit union, often you can join if you live in the county. The ones around me offer simple reward credit cards with no fee and calling up and saying "I want a xxx limit" works.

I agree, I stopped dealing with the big banks (B of A, Citi, etc) a long time ago. Went with the local credit union for most of my stuff, and have been much happier. I think the country would be better off if a lot of us just stopped doing business with the greedy megabanks......you know the ones, they are "too big to fail".

[haha]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zero ... they tried to self-flagellate themselves and try to con me. Not happy with that style.

I hope it gave some satisfaction to them anyway.

[Westernskies]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mickeyd On our recent Panama Canal cruise we were actually upgraded by the cruise line. Instead of having our cabin on the "A deck" we were housed on the Main deck, one story above. Not sure how this benefited us as both had the same view out of the window, only one of them was about 10 feet higher up.

If the ship hit an iceberg, you'd get to live a few minutes longer...