Categories
Consumerism

Zero

My old bank sent me a Visa bill the other day.

Visa bill, balance $0

I wonder how many more bills they’ll send before they remember that I cancelled the card several months ago, and one of their staff cut the card up as I watched?

(I can’t believe I didn’t blog about that, as they tried to charge me the card’s annual fee about a week after the card was destroyed. But I can’t find it, so I guess I didn’t.)

By Daniel Bowen

Transport blogger / campaigner and spokesperson for the Public Transport Users Association / professional geek.
Bunurong land, Melbourne, Australia.
Opinions on this blog are all mine.

7 replies on “Zero”

I have a Westpac mastercard. I didn’t need it any more, and new the annual fee was coming up, so went into the bank and requested to cancel it. They asked why, I said that I didn’t want to pay the annual fee and I wasn’t going to be using the card any more. They promptly offered to waive the annual fee if I kept the account open. I figured what the hey, and have done so. It’s due for a fee again in April, so I’ll either cancel it, or they’ll offer it fee free again and I’ll keep it for another year :)

Yep – we still get a telstra bill every month saying “This is due” and then when we check it out we get told “You’re in credit!” No kidding?! Dunno if we’ll ever see that $60 back.

I recently had a Diners card and the call-centre person really really really tried to talk me out of cancelling it. ! Sounded to me as if they were penalised for letting a victim (uhmm customer) slip away.

I’m cancelling my Visa in about 2 months.

Sussy.
Just call the Telstra call centre and ask for a refund. I did that about 3 weeks ago and got a cheque within 4 days.

I had a credit card letter a few years ago telling me that they wouldn’t be giving me a new card because I didn’t spend enough on it. They still send me a monthly balance because I am 17p in credit on it.

Perhaps it’s an urban myth or maybe I’m just showing my age, but I believe that when computers – the devices meant to streamline accounting procedures and provide us with the “paperless office” – were still in their infancy and software systems were significantly more hide-bound and less sophisticated, not only were zero-amount bills produced on a regular basis but customers had to provide zero-amount cheques in payment to shut the bloody things up!

i get one from telstra every now and then for 55c, comes through with a notice not to pay it, reappears next quarter and then disappears.

i wonder how much this costs them each year countrywide and how hard it would be to just not send it?

Comments are closed.