Adventures in Foreign Finance

[Irulan]

ZenS - that's awful. Your school is rotten.

uh YEAH.
I'd go down to the financial office and get past the front desk people to show them what's going on. I'm sure you'll get the brush off but it is a start. I wonder if what they are doing by limiting your options is somehow illegal? This kind of stuff really pisses me off. There are a lot of nasty, predatory, customer-no-service card companies out there and it sounds like you've got one. Perhaps a call to your state attorney generals office, consumer division, might be in order before you go much farther. LOL, maybe a call to Dave Ramsey, too.

I've had to deal with these types of companies of behalf of a relative who has some brain damage, and was taken advantage of in a number of ways by cards.

Schools can be a total pain in the butt. My son's college won't accept VISA for tuition payments, only MC. Why? "that's what the board voted on". Stupid.

[Grog]

Schools can be a total pain in the butt. My son's college won't accept VISA for tuition payments, only MC. Why? "that's what the board voted on". Stupid.

The real reason is that credit card companies take a pretty hefty fee on transactions, and the board was trying to find a few pennies to save. UBC saves $2 million a year by no longer permitting people to use credit cards to pay tuition (since 2008). My bet is that your son's college probably got a very good deal from MasterCard... In current times of severe financial restraints (for universities funded by public monies and by endowment income alike) they are getting aggressive at it! They know it's unlikely that they will lose a student because of that.

Thanks by the way for the explanation about the charge cards!

[Tuckervill]

We got scammed again--this time on a Chase Visa. Unusual charges--Chase blocked them all, and we're getting new cards.

What is up with all this illegal activity in my midst all the sudden? My middle son pays his car payment to the same bank that has his checking account--the bank took his car payment out SIX times on the same day, and when they went to fix it, could only manage to fix 4 of them. Now he can't pay his rent and has utility checks bouncing. What's this about????

Oh, and he developed shingles from the stress!

Karen

[ZenSojourner]

OMG, that's awful! The bank should be responsible for all fees as a result of their mistake. Somebody made a data entry error most likely, but it shouldn't be that much hassle to fix it.

My son just got a credit card, wanting to develop a credit rating. What happened to the good old days when paying your bills, utilities, and rent was sufficient for a credit rating? Now they make you borrow money before you can borrow money.

My brother has been on a payment plan as a result of a partial bankruptcy. They haven't credited his house payment properly for 6 months. No one can figure out why, not even the bank apparently. His payment plan is supposed to be up this month but they've not credited any of his last several months payments to his house payment principle, it's all being tagged as "interest" and the bank can't fix it. No wonder our economy is in the shape it's in, the lunatics are running the asylum!