Dear $COMPANY,

[vakkotaur]

Dear Insurance Company A,

Your marketing folks might have thought that the plain envelope with a return address indicating rate adjustment and a letter with a big check mark by the word DECREASE rather than INCREASE would get my attention and get me to switch to you. They were half right. I now know you engage in deceptive practices by trying to pose as my actual insurer. You just landed on the fecal roster. I don't do business with places that start off by lying to me.

---

Dear Credit Card Company A,

You can stop trying to get me to get another card from you. I already have one. It's at a lower rate than you're pushing now, and that rate is a fixed rate. I don't need a 0% introductory rate or 0% rate on balance transfers. I don't have balances to transfer from higher rate cards. If I got the card you're pushing, it would be the higher rate card.

---

Dear Credit Card Company B,

You can stop trying to get me to get your credit card, or you can actually make an offer that's worth more than a warm bucket of spit. I have no need of high rate cards, let alone high rate variable cards, no matter what gimmicks and toys come with it. I don't need worthless points, as I accumulate so few on the fixed rate cards I do have and they all seem to only be good for items I consider to be worthless crap. That's not much of a reward. Oh, I also don't need airline miles, either. I neither spend nor fly enough for them to be worth anything to me.

---

Dear Credit Card Company C,

Calling a rate fixed and then revealing in the fine print (which I do read, unfortunately for you liars) that it's only fixed for a month at a time and varies from month to month is not being truthful. A fixed rate stays put for more than a month at a stretch. You get a place on the fecal roster too.

---

Dear Credit Card Company D (and others),

Enough with the phony baloney checks and "free" offers that if gone for enroll a person in an expensive program. The latest one, for a "free" credit report was particularly dandy. Unfortunately for you, I read the fine print. Oh, and in a few months I'll be able to get a free credit report that really is free.

---

Dear Mortgage Company Advertising on Radio,

Your "interest only" loan sounds good, except for the one huge thing you don't mention directly. Sure, the payments are lower, that's because it's interest only. What about principle? You don't mention that after all those years of low monthly payments the principle will be due in a huge balloon payment. But you want people to ignore that ticking sound, right? Why, at the end I suppose a person could refinance with another mortgage, and remain in debt. I, however, am not that person. My payments may be higher, but when they end, they'll end.

---

Dear Auto Dealership,

No, I'm not interested in buying a car when the one I've got runs just fine. I was even less interested in buying a car when I was still making payments. I am not interested in a lease, either; the payments don't stop. Oh, you say I get a new car every few years that way? Are your cars so bad they need constant replacement? Next time we meet we'll talk price and I'll be ready to walk out. Even if you were the only game in town, there are plenty of other towns. It's a mobile society, or did you somehow manage to forget that?

---

Dear Auto Dealership in Another State,

Stop wasting your time saying I'm entered in or can enter in some contest - which excludes people outside your own state. Just because you are stupid, don't expect everyone else to be just as stupid.

---

There. I feel a bit better now.

Comments

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

I really liked the letter from a credit card company (will I name it? No, nyet, non, iye...) that had a little emblem with the scales of justice on the front, as if to make me think it was from a lawyer or a law enforcement agency. That is supremely sleazy.

[electronin.livejournal.com]

I don't open anything from wilmington, Delaware.
Did you actually send those letters?

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Nope. This is just a rant. There was one letter sent a while ago, that was to a certain bank/credit card company that really had me offgeticked. I gave them a chance, and they blew it. So I will not do business with them. And when they bought out a bank I with I was doing business, I cancelled that card and told them why. I had no trouble with the place I had been dealing with, but I could no longer trust them as part of the other one. I don't get mail from them anymore.

[yakko.livejournal.com]

I'm very near to firing Chase/Bank One, but it takes a few months to actually do it (make sure the recurring payments are being charged to another card). Those are two higher-rate cards that I never keep balances on -- I just use them to buy things online -- so Chase's incessant mail and dodgy online service gets them the boot.

Bank One bought FirstUSA, so that card also goes as soon as I can figure out how to get my FreeBSD subscription charged to a card I actually use.

As for the rest of the crap I get in the mail, it never ceases to amaze me how they think they can get away with insulting my intelligence. What's bad is these people would insult Elmyra's intelligence! :o)