Wednesday, February 03, 2016

1599 What's Not in Your Wallet

1599 What’s Not in Your Wallet

The love- hate relationship with Capital One continues.  This time, comes an email, an ominous email.

It says, in effect and in much more complex legalese, “we think you may have been hacked so watch your statements closely and we’re sending you a new card with a new number and a built in chip.”

Uh oh.

Check the statement.  Just the usual stuff.  The card’s been active for decades.  Good interest rate back then.  Since doubled because (1) the credit score dropped below 800, (2) Everyone else is doing it and (3) “we can do it and there’s nothing you can do about it except pay off the whole thing.”

That’s impossible.

So we wait. Days pass. Then weeks. Then what comes in the snail mail? The new card?  No. Just a letter saying “we think you may have been hacked so watch your statements closely and we’re sending you a new card with a new number and a built in chip.”

More days. More weeks. Finally, (fanfare, please) “here’s your new card.”

Sure is pretty. But where’s my autographed picture of Samuel L. Jackson?  (There was a picture of Alec Baldwin with the previous renewal. But he got fired in the interim.)

Activate.  And now the real fun begins.

This card is mainly used for buying stuff on the internet and the shopping channels.  Also for the exterminator and the mail order pharmacy.  But changing the account number means going to a zillion different accounts, some of them with long- forgotten passwords.

A new tangle of paperwork.  A new waste of valuable computer time.

That means dealing with customer service at HSN, QVC, Evine, Jewelry TV, Liquidation Channel, Amazon, Highmark Blue Cross, Zap-a-Pest exterminators, Consumer Cellular, the New York Times, Elderly Instruments, Sweetwater Music, Just-Strings, Dish, Comcast and http//:whathaveiforgotten.com.

It’s going to be a long day.


Shrapnel:

--Living proof the financial gurus do not understand broadcasting following the NFL’s 450 million dollar agreement with NBC and CBS to carry Thursday Night football.  Yes, as they’ve scolded,  the networks are going to pay more than they recover for the broadcasts.  But the profit will come in other ways… follow up shows, good publicity and eyes, eyes, eyes.

--This really deserves a full 500 words.  But the lesson of Iowa is we need a national primary. Get the whole shebang over with at once and be done with it.  And no more winner-takes-all.

Quote of the Day: “We believe strongly that we won tonight.” Clinton spokesman on her 50- 50ish tie with Bernie Sanders in the Iowa voting and announcement that Clinton gets one more delegate than Sanders.

Grapeshot:
-Technically, if the figures are correct, Clinton won the Iowa thing by three tenths of one per cent.

-In most contact sports, this kind of a tie goes into extra innings or periods of overtime.

-Note to Ted Cruz: congratulations, but remember Santorum once won Iowa’s republicans and look what happened to him.

-Note to the electorate:  None of this matters, and chances are neither does your vote.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2016
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4759 The Supreme Court

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