Don’t Call Your Credit Card Issuers
Published September 23rd, 2008 in Credit Help and Tips.
The heading of this post may seem a little odd, but it’s a well known fact inside the credit card industry that the minute you get a customer on the line, you’ve got a good chance of selling to them.
Perhaps it’ll be a new credit card, a balance transfer, or some kind of credit monitoring program.
Regardless of what it is, you probably didn’t call customer service to buy something, but that won’t matter to the representative on the other end of the line.
It’s their job to sell you something, even if you weren’t shopping to begin with, and often their commission check (the bulk of their overall salary) is at stake.
If they get you on the phone, for any reason at all, you’ll have to fight off the offers the minute your original issue is resolved, or sadly, even if it has not been resolved.
And it’s really quite amazing how egregious it can be. I remember calling a credit card issuer a while back in an effort to stop receiving offers in the mail, the ones I received on nearly a daily basis.
After the representative took my name off the list, she then attempted to offer me a new credit card.
I explained that I wasn’t interested, and she went ahead and asked if I wanted to transfer a balance.
Amazing that after calling to stop the offers, she felt no shame in pitching a few more before ending the call.
That said, do what you can online when it comes to credit card management, otherwise you may just fall for an offer you really had no intention of getting involved with.
(photo: deborahleventhal)
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