Teleidoscope

Fri, Feb 02, 2007

Credit Union and Credit card Security Department Bozos!

Posted at 8:36 pm MST to Miscellaneous

I am NOT linking to the Bellco websites because I don't want to steer anyone toward them. Quite the contrary, at the moment.

Last week when I was in California I spent a few hundred dollars at Fry's on Tuesday evening and put it on my Bellco Visa, which had a zero balance and has a fairly high limit. I couldn't buy a new car with it, maybe a halfway decent used car: I have very good credit

On Thursday or Friday morning I got a call (at 7am California time) asking whether I had made the purchase. I told them the amount and location of the transaction before they told me, and said that I was in California on business. I was annoyed by the timing of the call, but my cell phone has a Colorado number so they didn't know how early it was for me. And I figured they were doing their job.

Today I tried to charge $30 to clear a bill that was messed up -- I think the post office may have eaten the bill when I was in Boston and having my mail forwarded. The card was declined, locked as suspected lost or stolen. It took 3 phone calls to and a lot of time on hold to get it unlocked. Coming after the phone the previous week, I found it seriously annoying.

A little later, I went to check my credit card account online. They added some really mickey-mouse 'security' procedures to the login process a month or so ago, but I don't think that is the problem. The site says my account doesn't have access to the service, which is interesting given that I have been using that website to get check my statements and pay my bill while traveling for several years. When I called about that, they said that my card was definitely unlocked and there was no reason the site should not be working for me. 6 hours later, the site is still not working.

I have really, really good credit: I could buy an SUV with a bunch of options with the credit limit on one of my other cards. I am sure there are plenty of companies that would be glad to give me a card. Maybe I should sign up for one associated with a charity I like, or an organization I belong to. I wouldn't even need to worry about rolling the balance, since the Fry's charge is basically all that's on the card.

I wouldn't bother with a Visa at all, but the banks make sure you can't survive on the road without a Visa or MasterCard. I prefer AMEX and Discover, and I have never had problems using either of them while travelling I wish I had used one of them last week.

If I have to pay the Bellco Visa bill by check, that will definitely be the last Visa payment they get from me.

Maybe I should look for a different credit union. I've been a Bellco customer for more than 20 years, and I have to say, in recent years I think they have developed a habit of being incompetent in ways that harass and raise costs for their credit customers. I paid off my car and refinanced my mortgages away from them because they were being 'incompetent' and charging me fees because of their failure to process their own paperwork correctly.

I absolutely will never finance another car through Bellco because of their repeated (mis-)handling of the car insurance paperwork for the loan the last time.

I've been spammed (snail-mail) by other Credit Unions lately, I should look into one of them. There's a CU about 3 miles from me, instead of 30 minutes for the nearest Bellco office. I wonder if I qualify as a member, and what their online banking site is like.

Maybe I'm getting cranky from being snowed in so much (60 mph winds today: the path is drifted shut again). But things like online credit card payments are what make being snowed in for weeks (and spending half off my life on the road) less of a hassle.

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