28 Apr 2025
I went in to Firestone Complete Auto Care to have some work done on my car. I am very happy with the work they have done and the stores seem to be well managed. When I was settling the bill, the clerk asked if I wanted to apply for a credit card. I said no, because I had run into a lot of late fees in the past with their credit card. She asked if she could put in an application for me anyway, because she was in some kind of contest.
I said ok, and when it asked for my income, I hesitated. She asked if I was semi-retired, and I said yes, so she made up a number for my income. Technically I'm on the hook for that, because at the end it asked me to confirm that everything was correct. Once I did, it said that I already had an active account. They even sent me a letter later, indicating that my application had been declined because I already had a different account with them.
Anyway, I put the charges on the existing credit card, and went home to pay it off. The website would not allow me to make a payment, because you can't make a payment larger than your last statement.
I waited a couple of days until I saw the charge show up, and still I was not allowed to make a payment on the website because my last statement had zero balance.
In the past I would repeatedly log in and see zero payment due, and then afterward I would log in and have a late fee. This happened over and over, and that's why I stopped using the account - I believe I even shredded the card.
This is not the end of the story. I kept logging in every couple of days, and I still had no statement. It said I had a due date coming up, but I was still unable to make a payment.
So I finally called the company. The representative explained that I would not have to make a payment on the upcoming due date, but my first payment would be one month later. All this time was eating into the zero interest six month time period.
When I asked if there was no way for me to make a payment, she said I could make a payment in the store, or she could take a payment from me, but she would have to get her supervisor's approval! They seem to make it hard to pay off your bill, but easy to slip up.
I'm trying to come up with a good word for it: slimy, scummy, scammy, sleazy, predatory, dishonest, manipulative?
I am 100% in favor of free enterprise.
But there are businesses out there that are very slimy in the way they deal with customers. Take for example, payday loans that take a car as collateral and charge a very high interest rate.
Many credit cards are designed to make it easy for you to make a small mistake and then have to pay a late fee. Or the six-months-interest-free deal where if you don't have it completely paid off within the six months, you get retroactive interest back to the date of the purchase. And if you miss a payment, you get that same retroactive interest.
I finally got the situation described above resolved, but the moral of this story is: there are some businesses that are designed to take advantage of you, instead of providing a valuable service at a good price. Beware!