Lim: Credit card promos

Saturday, January 28, 2012

HAVE you ever been guilty of going gaga over credit card promos?

At no other time in our lives has paying at the cashier posed such a great predicament. Which credit card should I use? Is that promo is still ongoing? How much was the minimum spend for that promo?

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I’d like to call this smart shopping. But at times, I have to wonder if it is really wise to keep up with all these credit card promos.

I mean, think about it. Think about the paperwork—-the collecting, the sorting, the organizing, the recording of all these charge slips, not to mention the praying that these charge slips are still legible at the time of redemption.

Think about the time spent: queuing up to redeem coupons or freebies. Think about the gas wasted: going back and forth exchanging charge slips for coupons and then coupons for freebies because redemption and/or exchange is limited to one/two/three a day.

And does it not drive you nuts to read the fine print for these promos? Available only for dine-in. Not for take-out. Not for drive-thru. Only 3 redemptions per day. Or only 1 redemption per branch. Do they actually want to give these freebies away?

Unreadable charge slips not accepted for redemption. Is it the consumer’s fault that the charge slips are being printed on old or poor-quality thermal paper that renders the writing unreadable after just a few weeks?

Splitting of single transactions into multiple charge slips is prohibited. Should the consumer who spent P100,000 in a single purchase be considered inferior to the consumer who spent P10,000 ten times? Does that make sense?

And what is this ridiculous excuse about stores running out of coupons or gift certificates? If you participate in a promo, you must be prepared for the onslaught of redemptions just as you need to be prepared for the wrath of consumers who go crazy when they are told that the stores have run out of coupons or gift certificates.

Consumers CAN wait. But their charge slips CAN’T. You made the rules, remember? So make up your mind. Do you or do you not want to give these freebies away? Because if you do, you’d make it EASY not agonizing for consumers to redeem whatever it is you say you want to give away.

Consumers cannot help but question the sincerity of these credit card promos or cast doubt on the integrity of the companies and people behind these promos.

Someone I know actually walked into the bank, dramatically cut her credit card in half and left it at the desk of one of the bank officers. It was her idea of expressing her disappointment with the credit card she felt she’d been duped into getting.

And all because of this deceptive cash-back feature. A seemingly great find till she realized that the cash-back feature of her credit card had an annual cap. The card was completely reward-less after just a few months.

And such is the rage often felt by the consumer who, after carefully planning her charge purchases to avail of the maximum rewards, finds she’s been royally screwed.

Of course, outsiders would not understand. You need to be a multiple credit-card bearing hard-core shopper to understand this.