Credit cards, coupons, and fallen trees

Nate and I like making money off our credit cards. We especially like making money off cards when we know we've earned more from the cards than we've paid in interest. (The secret to this is, of course, that unlike most Americans, we have almost never carried a balance on our cards from month to month. The cards get paid in full every month, unless we are in what is called a Bush-Wentzel financial crisis, which so far is strictly defined as either 1) Moving or [possibly? I can't remember now] 2) Chrismas.)

How do we make money off our cards? The best one right now is our Citibank Mastercard, which pays 5% cash back for groceries, gasoline, and drug stores, and 1% cash back everywhere else. Yes, cold hard cash; they sent us a check for $121 a couple of months ago! :-) We pay for everything possible with this card to get the free money. Some of our other cards give 1% back in other ways, like American Express Points or BP Visa Gasoline Certificates or Amazon.com Visa Points. (Yes, we inexplicably have 6 credit cards right now, but [at least] one of those will get cancelled soon.)

For years the credit cards have sent us Checks, too; checks which, when cashed, will activate our membership in some kind of Program that costs money each month. Up until recently I've just thrown them all away, assuming none of the deals were worth it. Then a few weeks ago, I actually took time to read the fine print on the thing:

"YES, this check for $10 is yours to keep, and you may call this 1-800 number to cancel membership and OWE NOTHING..."

I stopped to think about it. That's about what I make for an hour of math tutoring. And all I have to do to earn THIS ten dollars is... call a phone number to cancel? Piece of cake.

So this morning, it was time to actually make that call to cancel. Having done transactions like this before, I knew that I must Steel my nerves for the onslaught of... duh duh du duhhh... The Telemarketer. Here's an approximation of our conversation:

Me: "Hi, I want to cancel my membership in the Rewards Program"
Telemarketer: [Feigning friendliness] "Okay, I can help you with that. May I ask why you'd like to cancel membership in the program?"
Me: [thinking, okay, that's a fair enough question...] "Well, I looked through the coupons you've sent, and I really don't think I'd save money with the program. I don't buy very much from those stores. So I'd like to go ahead and cancel."
Telemarketer: [still feigning cooperation] "Okay, that's no problem. Now just to let you know, we're going to go ahead and send you... [some kind of coupon or something else]..."
Me: "Okay" [Meaning, okay, I'm listening to what you're saying and I don't think you're done yet.]
Telemarketer: [in pefectly soothing, quiet, agreeable, we-haven't-changed-anything tone] "Okay, so I'll go ahead and leave you enrolled in the program then..."
Me: [in slightly panicked tone] "WAIT! STOP!! I want to CANCEL the program!!" (as I wonder, what did I say that made it sound like I'd changed my mind?!?)
Telemarketer: [nonfazed] "Okay, that's no problem, I can help you with that." [In tone of voice that conveys, this time she's really accepted and agreed to the fact that I'm cancelling.] "Just to let you know, if you would be shopping in a store over the next 30 days and see an item you wanted to purchase, you could give us a call and we could arrange for you to save up to 50% on the item. So just keep that in mind- if you do go shopping and you want to get something, just give us a call, and it will be no problem, all right?"
Me: [interpreting her vague statements to mean that I have the option to call to reactivate my membership in the next thirty days if I want to]: "Okay..."
Telemarketer: [same quiet, soothing, agreeable voice as before] "Okay, so I'll go ahead and keep your membership active..."
Me: [starting to feel Increasingly Panicked and frustrated]: "NO!!! I WANT TO CANCEL MY MEMBERSHIP!! I WANT TO CANCEL!!!"
Telemarketer: [still nonfazed]: "Okay..." (and this time she actually took my name and address, cancelled my membership, and gave me a cancellation confirmation number.) :-)

I ask you, gentle Reader, are these tactics even LEGAL!?! I was expecting a couple of paragraphs on Why You Should Remain a Member of the Program, to which I would politely decline, but after this morning's conversation I think that I shall resolve to NEVER say something like "okay" to these people; you just don't know what you're agreeing to. SO tricky!! The whole experience reminded me quite a lot of The Green Lady in The Silver Chair; you have to keep saying NO, vehemently, loudly, to avoid saying "yes." The next time I shall call to cancel such a program, I shall just continually say "I want to CANCEL" until they ask for my name and address.

I thought Brainwashing was illegal in this country...?

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Is there anyone out there who really LIKES coupons?

The sad thing is that I know- yes, there really are. Which means that there are Individuals out there, walking around in this fallen, messed-up world, who are so personally Intact and Competent and Together that they can actually Use Coupons Wisely. Do you realize what all this involves? To use a coupon Wisely, one must 1) Remember to have the coupon with one when needed, 2) Remember to Present the coupon at check-out, 3) Figure out when using a coupon represents an actual Savings of Money, as opposed to using a coupon just because it Exists or is about to Expire soon, which just leads one to spend more than one would have otherwise.

I fail on all three counts all the time, and needless to say, I Hate coupons.

One of the families I tutor for blessed me with a Coupon Book as a Christmas gift. You know the kind- sold as a fundraiser for some kid's something-or-other, filled with page after page of overwhelming Discount Nirvana. Suffice it to say that we have eaten at Bennigan's simply because we had a coupon for it, thus spending a good 20 or 30 bucks that we likely wouldn't have otherwise; and, we went to Burger King last week on the way home from church, completely forgetting about the entire PAGE of Burger King coupons that would have saved a good $3. (The coupon book was at home, anyway.) Coupons seem to exist to make me feel guilty about forgetting them, and nothing more. I'm much happier shopping in places that are just Cheap to begin with, like Ebay, Walmart, or thrift stores.

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Credit card companies and the makers of coupons are just killing all the trees, anyway.

The credit card companies' marketing techniques just amaze me. We get solicitations through mail, phone, and email almost every day, and some of them are EXACTLY the same ad every time! We must have gotten 20 ads (identical!) for this one credit card that gives Hilton Points or something. I can't afford to stay at the Hilton and wouldn't want to put all my credit card points towards that, anyway. I've gotten at least 2 phone calls soliticing me to join Credit Protector (one of the here's-free-money-to-join programs described above) in the last couple of weeks- EVEN THROUGH I've just joined it!! In the computer age, is it so hard to take me off their list? They're wasting my time AND theirs! Yesterday Nate and I each got solicitations for the Mastercard we already have! (What, should we have two or something?)

It makes me sad that so many trees are dying as a complete and utter Waste. And I feel guilty if I don't try to Recycle the mountains of paper, but our local recycling center is only open three days a week and actually driving over there never seems convenient. Someone told me that if you mail everything back, blank, in the postage-paid response envelopes, that stops the barrage quite a bit, but that, too, would take effort.

Perhaps for now I'll just try to continue working math problems on the backs of envelopes, as Dr. Mann suggsted. :-)