Our shit don’t stink

Oh the satisfaction of it all! It may be a mere R75 saving, but the mere ego factor of my victory is worth far more…

You see, I have a credit card with one of SA’s major banks, the bloody thing is less than a year old (you know how they send you a new card every 2 years?) and has some mysterious large credit limit which I will discover shortly when my statement is sent to me for last month (yip, I maxed it, thankfully mostly on company-related expenses that will be reimbursed).

Anyhow, the thing should not cease to read when swiped through retailers’ machines unless some major damage (and I don’t mean the financial kind) is inflicted on it, but mine has given up the ghost. After weeks of frustration (including a non-reading incident that delayed me for 45 minutes at the airport on the Friday evening of the Blog Awards, causing me to miss the announcement of Peas’ award, courtesy of an exorbitant parking bill I had no cash on me to settle) I called the customer ‘care’ line, to enquire about the procedure to replace my damaged card. All goes fine until right at the last step, when it dawns on me to ask whether there is any charge for the new card (because they train their sly consultants not to inform you of the fees they will automatically deduct from your account sans your permission), and it turns out there is indeed a charge – R75. I tell the consultant that is preposterous and that I will shop around for a new credit card, and that I will lay a complaint against the company, which I pursued immediately as promised.

I send an email informing them:

It is utterly incomprehensible that in the increasingly competitive environment of credit provision, you dare to suggest I should pay a R75 fee for a new card that has been damaged through no fault of my own, except perhaps overuse (which is to your advantage, anyway). My FNB debit card which is far older, and from a seemingly more reliable manufacturer, has never failed me, and I am increasingly using it to charge large expenses that my [insert name of offending bank here] credit card won’t read.

As I type this, I am already visiting the websites of competing products – do you know that one of your major competitors only charges R25 for the replacement of a damaged card? I’m certain the new-age affinity group credit cards charge nothing, along with their drastically reduced annual management fees, which appears to me to be a far more attractive proposition than that offered to me by your institution.

In the next few days I will have selected a new credit card product, and you will have lost another customer. I expect to write you yet another complaint when I realize that you will have charged me my full annual management fee of R150 for my card, even though at that point I will have used it for only 4 months of the year, but that is a battle I will fight when I come to it.

Yours sincerely

Angry Ant

To my amazement, I got a response within 3 hours, and the obsequious consultant managed to calm me down to the point that I agreed to stay with the bank if they gave me a free replacement card (lucky for them – my colleague tells me she has information that they’re bleeding credit card customers like hell at present) – which she promised will be available by next Monday at the latest. I wait in anticipation.

And in a little unrelated (as always) anecdote, Gilb’s friend told me a truly cringe-worthy story: he went to the Easter Oppikoppi festival, where the open-air male and female ablution blocks are separated by a mere wall. From the male shower stalls, the men could hear two girls going about their business (number 2’s, apparently plainly audible) in the toilets on the other side of the wall – this will be a hazard of going to the festival, but it’s to be expected, I guess. Anyhow, the one girl finished her business earlier than her friend, and she gets impatient with her and says (again, very clearly audible to the showering men): “knyp hom af, man, ons moet gaan!” (for the Engelse out there, this translates to “pinch it off, we must go!”). Sorry to dispel the myths about girls not pooing, guys, but at least ours do smell like roses :)