Q on phone call from cc company
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Q on phone call from cc company
| Thu, 01-12-2006 - 5:09pm |
Hi, Danni and everyone. Just got a solicitation phone call from the cc Discover people trying to get me to pay $.89 per $100 of balance for the "benefit" of paying off balance in case of unemployment, death, etc. It would be free monthly if no balance. I told them forget it, and hung up. Anyone get calls like this? Suppose if you DID lose your job, become financially challenged due to catastrophic events (death of spouse, severe illness, major surgery, layoff, etc.)? Then what? Whiz.

We actually used to have this 'credit insurance'. We paid .85 cents per $100 of our balance. Basically, they called the house, and Dh (not knowing what our balance was since I was still hiding it at the time), said, "Sure! That sounds great!", and accepted their offer! I called the card company and cancelled. Basically, the way I look at it, Dh has great life insurance, enough to pay off our house, our debt, and enable our Son to be taken care of...so I didnt feel we needed the credit insurance.
It was a little frustrating trying to get it cancelled, though. The sales lady wouldn't take "No" for an answer. She kept saying, "Well, we can put you on a plan that would pay off half of your card for .50 cents per $100..." and when I refused that, she'd come up with another way of getting me to stick with the coverage. She seemed pretty peeved when none of her offers appealed to me. :-D
Pat :-D
Credit life insurance is a huge rip-off. The reason they work so hard to get people to buy it is that it is a huge money-maker for them with nearly 0 benefit for the consumer.
If someone in your family dies, one of two things will happen. You will either have enough insurance or other means to make it through, and you won't need credit insurance. Or, you won't have enough assets to keep your heads above water, you'll end up declaring bankruptcy, and your credit balances will be the first thing to be forgiven. In any event, having your credit card balances forgiven will do you very little good.
If something less catastrophic happens, like a job loss, you'd better believe those credit card companies are going to pull out all the stops figuring out why your particular event doesn't qualify you for coverage--and believe me, they will have built so many loopholes into their system you won't know which way is right-side-up by the time they're done with you. And you'll hardly be in a position to hire an attorney to help you. You'll be completely at their mercy.
So, basically, what credit insurance does for credit card companies is create a revenue stream on top of their interest rate while creating very little actual liability on their part and almost zero zilch nada benefit for the consumer.
You did the right thing to hang up on them. Run screaming from any credit insurance offer you get. If you need insurance to cover your debts, buy it from a reputable insurance company that will pay you cash, not just forgive whatever debts you happen to have at that time, and that won't turn you inside out trying to keep from having to honor their agreement.
End of rant. You done good. :)
Heather