I think the biggest problem some people have in their dealings with credit card issuers etc. is that they think of them in the same terms as they might a privately owned company or like the mom and pop store where they might buy their tools or hardware at.

You have to completely turn around what most people would consider good customer service and good business habits when you're talking about multi billion dollar credit card banks, to them a person who pays off their bill in full each month is a deadbeat. They might berate them when they call to collect from them but their most valuable customers are those who don't pay their bills on time, who regularly go over their credit limit and who charge things like cups of coffee cause they don't carry any cash.

If you own a small business you're gonna value the folks who pay at the time the service is rendered or on a timely basis cause that improves your own cash flow, if you're a credit card bank the last thing you want is someone not incurring fees and interest payments and you have to get the people who are actually your profit centers to think badly about not being able to pay you on time.

I read a book about the current credit situation a lot of people find themselves in, the author tells of interviewing a family member of a customer who died, the creditor harangued the surviving family members to no end, finally telling the Mother of the deceased that he would rest easier knowing that his debt had been paid off... The customer in this case had killed themselves because he was convinced that he was so far in debt that he would never get out and he thought that it was the best way out for his family.

Strange times indeed...

JohnE