Thursday, March 22, 2007

Tired of shredding applications

After receiving my 3rd or 4th offer from American Express this week for a credit card plus who knows how many other offers from other banks/issuers, I have come to the conclusion we should make it trivial to file bankruptcy and that personal bankruptcy should be expunged from your record within 1 year of filing. Until it becomes painful to the credit industry, they will not clean up their act. When our pets receive credit card offers, something is definitely wrong. With personal debt at an all time high, and personal savings at a near all time low (below zero last year), people are obviously availing themselves of these credit offers. So if credit card companies are so quick to offer credit to less than credit worthy people or to non-people (our pets) or to people who have specifically registered with every possible opt-out mechanism, maybe eating a bunch of write-off losses will get them the message.

Yet the credit industry whines to congress that it is too easy for people to file personal bankruptcy. Perhaps if the credit industry encouraged financial responsibility instead of pushing credit cards, there wouldn't be as much of an issue with people over extending themselves due to accepting unsolicited credit card offers. Maybe we should allow filing personal bankruptcy monthly until the credit card industry gets a clue and becomes responsible for their own behavior.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Companies I will never do business with

Just another rant...

Certain companies have business practices that I find repugnant enough to warrant never doing business with them. One such company is American Express. They seem to be incapable of honoring my requests to remove my address from their mailing lists. I continue to get mailings soliciting credit cards contrary to my preferences as registered with the various credit reporting agencies and against my previous requests to them to remove my address. Apparently they feel free to ignore my preferences and requests and simply keep mailing me these offers.

I'll add others as I come across them...