Credit Card Blues

Whatever you do don't fuck with Mellon Bank

This started on August 14, 1999. Down at the bottom..you can see how it has continued.
Hoo, excuse me..I have to take a few deep breaths to calm down before I get into this. And I'll probably have to go back and edit out all the four-letter words, too.

To begin, yes, I know credit cards are a bad thing. Especially when you live so close to a strip bar! And I freely admit that I'm one of those idiots that runs them up..then carries and absurd balance until I can pay it off. I can hear ya shakin' your head already. But, barring unforseen accidents (like cars blowing up), my payments are on time or in this case early and for the minimum due amount, usually. Yeah, yeah I know what you're thinking:"But chunkking, if you only pay the minimum amount due, you'll never get those things paid off!". I know that! When I've got it, I send extra.

This story all began in mid-July, 30 days ago. I had a good evening, a couple of beers, and sat down to fill out the month's bills. Got them out of the way, stamped sealed and mailed the next morning. When I got around to entering them into my "accounting software" I realized that I had filled in a 0 where I should have put a 9...ending up $90 short on a payment. Okay, maybe I had more than a couple beers, and there was something on T.V. I was watching at the same time. But I figured "What the heck, I've been with them for 6 years, I always pay early, no biggee" and went on with life.

Aug 3 - I get a recorded message phone call: "An important message awaits you! Call Miss Jackson at 1-800-722-2311". I'm very skeptical of scams and such, and have no idea what the hell this is about so I blow it off.

Aug 4 - I get a recorded message phone call: "An important message awaits you! Call Miss Jackson at 1-800-722-2311". I'm very skeptical of scams and such, and have no idea what the hell this is about so I blow it off.

Aug 5 - I get a recorded message phone call: "An important message awaits you! Call Miss Jackson at 1-800-722-2311". I'm very skeptical of scams and such, and have no idea what the hell this is about so I blow it off.

Aug 6 - I see another message on the phone and I don't even bother checking it.

Aug 7 - A Saturday! I had to go into work and on the way out the door, I see ANOTHER message on the answering machine! GRRRRRR! This means they called between 6am and 6:30am..while I was in the shower....or earlier and I didn't hear the phone. I got home about 5:30pm and rewound the tape...sure enough, this Miss Jackson really wants me to call, so I give in and call. When "they" pick up, all I hear is "Thank you for calling card member services. Please be advised that your call may be monitored, or taped for quality purposes. Please have your 16-digit account number ready and the next available representative will assist you".

Shortly, there's a female voice on the line "May I have your account number please?"

Okay, now be sure you've read all the "quoted" material above. Do you have any idea who is calling? Neither did I! And I had to convince the representative that it was very important for me to know who the hell wants my account number, and for that matter which account number. Unfortunately I have several cards. Fortunately it's half the number I used to have.

After all that wrangling, sure enough they're calling to inform me that I'm a whole $90 past due. And what can I do about that on a Saturday night? Well, the collections department has gone home for the day at 1pm and there's not a goddam thing I can do about it. However, I found out that my statement had been mailed on....guess what day? August 3rd! I thanked her for her help, hung up, and walked out to the mail box. No statement yet...as a matter of fact, no mail at all.

Aug 8 - you guessed it, Sunday...and guess who called, again. I didn't really want to be awake at 7am on a Sunday, but at least I got all my laundry done before the heat set in.

Aug 9 - Monday, at least there wasn't a message on the machine this morning. Unfortunately, I had such a productive (i.e. good) day at work I forgot to call. And wouldn't you know, there's a message on the machine. I got home around 7pm so I didn't even bother trying to call that night.

Aug 10 - Duh, I must have brain damage..but I got home and guess what? I finally got the statement from Mellon bank! Woo hoo..7 days transit time from Delaware to Georgia, assuming that's where it's mailed from. And I got home early enough to hear another trusty message, jack my blood pressure up about 50 points, and call in. I went off on the representative (Christopher) that answered, gave my account number, (miracle of miracles) there is a collections representative available!) So I go off on him for a bit, point out my sever disappointment with Mellon Bank services, give him my account number again and get everything straightened out. "Yes sir, we'll get your name off the list and you shouldn't receive any more phone calls".

By this time, I felt pretty bad, so I called back to the original card member services, got Christopher back on the line and appologized to him for my behavior when he first answered. I had no right to go off on him. Christopher was very helpful, very patient with me, and maintained his composure throughout. That's more than I would have done. He assured me that he didn't take it personally, its part of the job, and so on and so on, but he did appreciate that I went to the trouble to call him back and appologize. That didn't happen very often.

Aug 11 - Holy shit! No phone call!

Aug 12 - Holy shit! Another day and no phone call! I had beers to celebrate.

Aug 13 - (Friday) Sure enough, there's my paycheck. I set down and write out all the bills. And have a beer to celebrate!

Aug 14 - Another Saturday at work. I don't mind Saturdays at work when they're like this. No upper mgmt. people around to mess up your schedule. No meetings. And I've spent a couple of days making sure everything is ready to I can just go in, work to my heart's content, and leave. They even bought us lunch for working so hard to get this project done. Left about 3:30 and had to run a few errands. Got home at 5:30. Not only is my cable out, but guess who called? And guess what? All the people from the collections department have gone home for the day! GRRRRRRRRRRRR!

To save you the trouble, this makes 8 phone calls from them in a 11 day period.

If you happen to know what qualifies as harrassment in a case like this, please drop me a line. Or if you know who I could contact to discuss this matter, please drop me a line.

Aug 15 - haha, and the beat goes on...guess who called? At 6:18 pm..and I know damn well there isn't anyone there to answer the damn phone if I did call back.

August 16 - hey, my memory worked pretty good. I remembered to call these people at 9:10 a.m.

Uh, we use a computerized system.

We use it to call people to remind people about their promises.

I explained that I had fulfilled my end of the bargain and it takes several days for US Mail to reach them so why are they calling me, now?:

"Uh, it was a computer glitch."

Either "Garbage In, garbage out" or "PEBCAK - Problem Exists Between Chair And Keyboard" in my humble opinion.

To be fair, the collections guy did offer to give me a name and address I could write to, but I think we already know how much help that would be. Probably start calling me daily to discuss the problem.

While the people, for the most part, tried to be very helpful, and were very patient, no one I spoke to could do a damn thing useful other than "make a note to my account".

Once again, thanks for reading this far.