Good Riddance Greedy Washington Mutual
Right around Christmas (2007) I made some changes to my Real Rhapsody online music account so that my daughter could download songs to her newest MP3 player.
Real Rhapsody ended up double billing us that month, which put us over our credit card limit. We had carefully avoided going over limit, but with Christmas we were left without any buffer.
Rhapsody compensated us, and gave us three months free service, but the event triggered a change in rates on our Washington Mutual Credit Card.
What had been a barely acceptable credit card rate before skyrocketed to 30%
That's right 30%
They didn't seem to care that it wasn't our fault.
This is a card we have left close to the maximum limit for nearly a year (since saving our cat Koshi's life).
Each month we have paid just the amount needed, but no more. We've been busy this last year paying off my daughter's car, and now my own. And we also are paying for a vet bill.
WAMU was making a good bit of interest off of us - let me tell you, but then they had to go and get greedy.
Thirty Percent? What is this, and episode of the Sopranos?
I obtained a loan from a secured source at an acceptable rate of interest, and I will now pay the WAMU card off by August.
Greed may be good, but it works best when your victims have no way out - but that's a lesson I'm sure WAMU knows well.
I know I shouldn't cancel the card - it will hurt my credit to payoff the card and then cancel it - and that is surely what the India call center wo/man will tell me the day I call them to cancel their card (that's what the last credit card company said when I canceled the last card).
But I'm going to do it - I'm going to cancel the card with relish.
In the meantime our so called representatives, who are in bed with companies like WAMU, allow credit card holders to get screwed by companies like this. I've read where WAMU is in financial troubles. I bet if they started going under, they'd beg for a federal handout, and probably get one.
2 comments:
JP,
A good friend of mine was in a similiar situation, paying 30% plus interest. He tried contacting the credit card company directly to negotiate a lower rate. They told him to go pound sand.
He then just stopped payment on his credit card. He said that he wouldnt be screwed like some flunky in debt to a loan shark.
6 weeks after he stopped paying, the credit card company called him up and told him that they would cut a deal with him. They would allow him to pay 50 cents on the dollar of his outstanding balance, which was around $20,000 if he paid it off in 90 days. (so basically they said "pay 10,000" in 90 days and we call it even.) He took the deal and it did not hurt his credit.
Sounds very risky Rickmonday, but good for your friend. When you friend told you it didn't hurt his credit the question you needed to ask was - what kind of credit did you have before?
It couldn't have been good, and thus the impact upon his credit may not have been that adverse.
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