December 4th, 2009 by John 
in Categories: 
I was going through my mail today and came across a letter from one of our credit cards. It had “Important information about your account” stamped in red on the envelope. It looked like junk mail, but the attention getting message, got my attention. I proceeded to open the letter and was a little surprised at what I found. My credit card just fired me.
The letter informed me that we had not used their card in 12 months and they had decided to close our account.
“This letter is to inform you that we are making an important change to your Unsecured Line of Credit (your “Account”). We periodically review our customers’ overall banking relationship with us and your Account was recently reviewed. Because there has been no activity on your Account for the last twelve months, we are closing the Account.”
Have a nice day.
Bad Business
First, let me clarify, I’m not upset about them closing our account. Just a little perplexed. As the letter stated, we hadn’t used the card in over 12 months and it had no balance. What bothers me, is that we had that credit card account for more than 20 years. And yes, we had used the card for purchases in the past. It would seem that the card issuer would warn us, ask if we have a need for the card. What a way to end a good relationship. It’s sort of like breaking up with your significant other via text message. Stupid.
Dumb and Dumber
Another part of the statement that bothers me is “We periodically review our customers’ overall banking relationship…” I find this line extremely funny. Our overall banking relationship with this creditor includes our mortgage. OUR FREAKIN MORTGAGE, which is paid on time, along with our credit card. Banking relationships don’t get much bigger than your MORTGAGE. My question is, WHO is reviewing their customers overall banking relationships? If I were a stockholder of this institution, this type of behavior would be a major red flag. Sell, sell, sell.
Credit Crunch
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the current credit climate. I get it. Banks are nervous about their potential exposure from dresser drawer credit cards with zero balances. But doing away with an account like ours is just plain stupid. Common sense should prevail, right? Of course, the problem with common sense is… it isn’t so common.
Cut and Run, Finished and Done
Had our relationship not been unexpectedly severed, we would have eventually bought something with that card and paid it back. I thought that’s the way it was supposed to work? Oh well, their loss, not ours. We have other cards. For now…
Have you had a similar experience? Has your credit card company closed your account? Do tell.
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My name is John.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s kinda funny. My credit card did the same thing to me this year except their reasoning is that I no longer live in Canada so they no longer want to do business with me. The funny part is I have a bank account in Canada, pay the credit card bill from that bank account, was in good standing with the cc company and they actually owed me $1.74 because I had just over paid my bill the previous month accidentally.
Oh well, as you say, their loss not mine. I have other cards.
Cheers,
Joanne
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“It’s sort of like breaking up with your significant other via text message.”
Yeah, knowing you guys have that card for over 20 years, you should really expect something more proper than that.
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It probably wasn’t worth their time maintaining your account as you used it so little. I’m guessing you paid any balances off straight away as well. Not counting the related bank stuffthey are likely making a loss here.
For just one person it’s not going to be much, but they have millions of these, and it adds up.
Whilst it’s also not great from a customer service point of view, I suspect most people don’t get so upset that they change their mortgage lender or bank account over it.
So if you think about it from that side, it makes perfect sense.
As an aside, the people they make money from are people who use their cards a lot and don’t pay off the balance every month. Hence one reason Joanne’s account was probably closed.
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Unbelievable…..and totally bad business. I can remember the days when they would send you those checks…remember those? 4 or 5 that you would rip apart…they had a minimum they could be used for and would come with this handy dandy message of “Hey! Feel free to use these checks for…well, anything! C’mon! The interest rate will only be 24.65%! Isn’t that worth the smile you’ll have on your face when he sees that big-screen tv??”
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You should live in Portugal… here we have the banks offering credit cards everyday. I´m not a good example as I never owned credit cards (I only use temporary cards – MBnet – because they are much safer) but if I were you I would be happy about being “fired”
You should wright them back firing the mortgage… LOL
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These credit card companies don’t want people who actually carry a zero balance they want the suckers that pay late and always carry a balance. Here is a great example. We had a retail credit card from a retailer that recently went out of business i wont mention any names here (coughcircuitcoughcitycough) any way this retailer closed our account once they closed down although they were financed through a bank. We carry zero balances most of the time and we only used the card when they were offering zero interest promos on something we wanted. So they close our account and i figured it was because they went out of business no biggie. So come to find out my sister who cant manage her money had the same card but it was almost maxed out and they sent her a brand new card for another retailer and even increased her limit. The bottom line is they want the people who will never be able to pay off their balances and are constantly paying interest.
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