Credit card companies offer no loyalty

December 19, 2006

It seems that when it comes to credit card companies, even their most responsible customers are not prone to privileges. René Rodríguez has been an extremely loyal customer of the bank ‘Citibank’ for years and he has always paid his bills on time and has never caused any problems. Yet, after an oversight of one missed bill, Citibank literally took away all of his privileges.

Mr Rodríguez was billed $39 simply for his late payment and even though he did pay as soon as the mistake was realised, he also lost his interest free grace period. Instead, interest was added at around 24% and he ended up paying $100 overall because of this one-off missed fee payment.

You have to wonder whether these banks do have any loyalty to their customers when things like this happen. For somebody who had always paid their bills on time, it seems like such a drastic action to simply strip him of all benefits for a simple oversight. It generally seems like banks are waiting for customers to make these mistakes in order to squeeze as much money out of them as possible. It would be understandable if Mr Rodríguez had a history of not paying his bills, but one oversight and that is it.

This will perhaps force more customers to be a little more careful with their accounts. Even if you make a mistake the banks are unlikely to be forgiving so the best answer is to be extra careful. Obviously mistakes are going to happen over time but as long as you have some money saved away for emergencies you should be ok. It just seems a shame that it has to come to keeping money in savings for these unnecessary overcharges.

One thing is for sure – Mr Rodríguez is bound to be a little more cautious after this incident!