Another change of address story

I went to a branch of the massive system where we only have a credit card to change my address (we get points to reduce the balance amount). I showed my DL which has the new address and current card. As it turned out I got a trainee, who seemed sort of bored. He spent some time bringing up the correct screen. I told him I also wanted to change my email, and he told me they don't have an email for me. "Then why do I get all these messages from you?" I said. "Must be a scam," he replied. In truth it alerts me to my balance and any specials available on the card for the month. I didn't argue with him--but I hope he's not in training for a bigger job. Then I said I wanted to be sure the phone number was correct, so he read back our old land line and one we have not had for 23 years, predating when we took out the credit card. So, I gave him my cell phone number. Then I asked if he could print out for me all the changes. He didn't know how to PRINT a page!!! He called his supervisor for help. The supervisor had probably 5-7 studs in his face, including little silver balls hanging out his nostrils. That's rather distracting for 86 year olds. Takes you back to your kids' runny noses. He advises him to "print screen" which I would have done if I could see his computer screen. By this time I really needed to sit down I'd been standing so long, but I escaped to the 85 degree weather.

The reason I went to that branch in person was another branch had not allowed my husband to make the changes for me, only himself.

Happy New Year—you have no privacy

I confessed in my piece about Elizabeth Warren that I shopped on Panic Saturday (Dec. 21). Macy's was so happy to see me again that today I received a 14 page bill (some pages were blank) for spending $221.07 on Christmas gifts for my husband! I'm so old I remember when credit card bills were half a sheet of paper 2 sides.

But I was warned. On pg. 1 it referred me to pg. 7 for details on changes being made to my Credit Card Agreement. On pg. 3 it warned me about changes coming on 2/24/20 which it will do in detail on p. 7, and again repeats all the billing information on p. 1--Polo sleepwear, Hilfiger sleepwear, Hilfiger necktie, Tasso Elba neckwear, Alfani shirt, Perry Ellis neckwear, Clubroom shirt. BTW, the Alfani fabric felt cheap after I removed 105 straight pins and washed it. On p. 5 and 6 the only information was that the annual percentage rate is 26.74%, variable rate.

Finally the glorious p. 7 where I am told how much I am appreciated and how they look forward to serving me in the future. The changes revealed on p. 7 are
increased late fees,
returned payment fee and
returned convenience check fee.
The minimum payment due calculation is changing and
the Promotion calculation is recalculated beyond my ability to understand.

"For additional language regarding how and when these fees will be charged, please see the section called "Fees" in your Credit Card Agreement.
Then in a box the explanation of penalty fees--late payment and returned payment. I only have a master's degree, and couldn't decipher this even with the sentence diagramming I learned in 4th grade.

On p. 8 the good folks in Macy's advanced college English class explain making payments--
Minimum Payment Due,
calculated new balance
past due account,
excess of my credit limit,
amount due on each Club Plan,
adding in any amount required by
the Promotion Calculation
the calculated new balance, rounded up
applicable late fee
subtracted interest charges accrued during prior billing cycles
Special event balance
Calculated new balance = New Balance - any balances subject to a Club Plan or the Promotion Calculation

At this point I'm only half way through p. 8 and am worn out.

Page 9 explains who all can see my personal information. It's like Trump's tax returns. If Macy can do all this, why can't Congress? It clearly says, Macy's can share my personal information with anyone they damn well please. Honest. It does.

Social security number and income,
account balances and
employment information,
credit history and
transaction history,
anything they need to run their everyday business. . .
even court orders and
legal investigations or
credit bureau information.

Why do they need this private, personal information? According to Macy's p. 9 of 14,
for marketing purposes,
for joint marketing with other financial companies,
for their affiliates everyday business purposes, and
Macy's everyday business purposes so
they can market to me and
their nonaffiliates can market to me.

And when I am no longer Macy's customer, they claim the right to continue to share my information described in this notice.

DSNB does this, not Macy's. Department Stores National Bank. And on p. 10 there is a long list of what it collects.

Page 11-14 are math problems. 3%, 2% 1% rewards spent at restaurants which are stand-alone merchants in the U.S. that primarily serve food. If you accumulate 1,000 points, yada, yada. . .
But exclusive for you: free shipping from Al's family farms 18 lbs of Florida Honeybells for only $49.95 delivered with a bonus of Orange blossom honey.

Happy New Year. Capitalism is almost as much fun as taxes.

The Facebook flap

Everyone is upset about Facebook sharing our data. Our carelessness in exchange for convenience has been going on a long, long time. Read the DSNB disclaimer that comes with your credit or debit card. To have the convenience of a piece of plastic in your wallet, you agreed years ago to share your personal information in any transaction the bank needs to maintain your account, including legal investigations and credit bureaus; you agreed they could use your personal information for marketing purposes; for uses with other financial companies; for their affiliates (whoever that is) to perform their "everyday" business purposes; for those affiliates to use your personal data for their business purposes, and for those affiliates to market to you using your own information you supplied when you applied for credit.

In 1967 when we moved to Columbus we had to request service from the utility companies. On ONE form there was a small error where a number took the place of a letter in my husband's name. That error continued to appear in all sorts of advertising we received for years because all that is sold. And resold.  Same with the BMV. So although the FB theft and misuse of our data is much bigger, we've been carefully eased into this lobster bath of warm water heating up for over 50 years.

https://www.itsecurityguru.org/2018/04/09/facebooks-data-scandal-impact/

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/12/19/facebook-used-data-from-chinese-security-threat-huawei-for-site-feature/

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-privacy.html

Do you have Amazon Prime on file?

Anna reports:  "My Public Service Announcement for the day. Don't keep a credit card number on file at Amazon. I had a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime last November/December and cancelled it at the time. The other day I got an email from Amazon telling me that the credit card I had on file at Amazon (so I could do one-click ordering) was no good (it had gotten hacked, so we shut it down a couple of months ago), so they had been unable to charge me $99 to renew my Amazon Prime. I didn't have a current Amazon Prime account that was due for renewal. Amazon just decided out of the blue to bill my card for a year's subscription, just because it was there and they could. Thank goodness the card was no good. I have removed all credit card info from Amazon. So it will take me a few more clicks to order. I can deal with that."

A noose of snooping gets tighter and more expansive

If there were ever a federal agency misnamed, it’s the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“(Washington, DC) - Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained records from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) revealing that the agency has spent millions of dollars for the warrantless collection and analysis of Americans' financial transactions. The documents also reveal that CFPB contractors may be required to share the information with "additional government entities."

The records were obtained pursuant to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed on April 24, 2013, following the April 23 Senate Banking Committee testimony of CFPB Director Richard Cordray. The documents uncovered by Judicial Watch include:

Overlapping contracts with multiple credit reporting agencies and accounting firms to gather, store, and share credit card data as shown in the task list of a contract with Argus Information & Advisory Services LLC worth $2.9 million

Deloitte Consulting: solicitation issue date 11/30/2011, award effective date 05/29/2012;

Argus: solicitation issue date 02/14/2012, award effective date 03/15/2012;

Experian: solicitation issue date 07/03/2012, award effective date 09/24/2012

An "indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity" contract with Experian worth up to $8,426,650 to track daily consumer habits of select individuals without their awareness or consent

$4,951,333 for software and instruction paid to Deloitte Consulting LLP

A provision stipulating that "The contractor recognizes that, in performing this requirement, the Contractor may obtain access to non-public, confidential information, Personally Identifiable Information (PII), or proprietary information."

A stipulation that "The Contractor may be required to share credit card data collected from the Banks with additional government entities as directed by the Contracting Officer's Representative (COR)."

The full extent of the CFPB personal financial data collection program is revealed in a document obtained by Judicial Watch entitled "INDEFINITE-DELIVERY INDEFINITY-QUANTITY (IDIQ) STATEMENT OF WORK." According to the IDIQ document's stated Objective: "The CFPB seeks to acquire and maintain a nationally representative panel of credit information on consumers for use in a wide range of policy research projects... The panel shall be a random sample of consumer credit files obtains from a national database of credit files."

To accomplish this objective, the CFPB describes the scope of the program accordingly:

The panel shall include 5 million consumers, and joint borrowers, co-signers, and authorized users [emphasis added]. The initial panel shall contain 10 years of historical data on a quarterly basis [emphasis added]. The initial sample shall be drawn from current records and historical data appended for that sample as well as additional samples during the intervening years [emphasis added] to make the combines sample representative at each point in time.

The CFPB data collection program has been highly controversial since the April 2013 hearing, when Cordray disclosed elements of the venture at a Senate Banking Committee hearing. At the time, the US Chamber of Commerce accused the CFPB of breaking the law by demanding the account-level data without a warrant or National Security Letter.”

http://washingtonexaminer.com/feds-collecting-personal-confidential-data-on-consumers-credit-cards-bank-transactions/article/2532467

Sometimes routines hurt

This morning I headed for the coffee shop and put on a navy blazer over my navy print slacks and matching T. I patted the pocket to check for tissue, and felt something hard--my credit card. My heart sunk--not because I found it, but because I should have hung it in my clothes closet yesterday, but instead put it in the downstairs coat closet. What if. . . I would have been calling all over trying to locate it if I had put it where it belonged.

I stared at it in disbelief. How did my credit card get in my Spring linen blazer that didn't come out of the closet until yesterday? (It's been a cool Spring). I almost never use a credit card, and if I need something on Sunday I usually pay cash because it's so small, like a quart of milk or bunch of bananas. I started reviewing the week-end in my mind.

I'd bought 2 CDs of Karen Burkhart at the concert Saturday night with a check. I'd bought 2 DVDs of the prayer breakfast film with a check on Sunday. So I began to think about what I'd been wearing--it was Mother's Day and I wore a nice outfit to show off the gardenia corsage from my daughter and son-in-law. After church I needed to make some photocopies of the art show list at Mill Run, so I drove home, changed clothes to a red dress and fired up the computer for a master list. Then I selected the blazer because it was getting warm and I didn't need a coat. Went back to church, used the photocopier, and then drove to the other campus (we have 3). I placed the copies on the table next to the art show and put the master in my husband's file in the church office, and went back to the parking lot.

In my mind (figuring this out), I'm sitting in the parking lot. Then I remembered. The low gasoline light had come on while I was on the bridge over the Scioto River, and I decided I'd have to find a station before driving home. I just never pump gas, so that's how the credit card got from my purse into my pocket. I had inserted it into the pump and then into my pocket, and never put it back in my purse.

And that's how I almost lost my credit card--because I might only pump gas once a year, and it was so out of my routine, I'd totally forgotten it.

But you would never misplace anything, would you?

BTW, the Upper Arlington Art League Spring Show will be in the Church at Mill Run Gallery (2nd floor) until June 10. Building is closed Friday and Saturday. At Lytham, my husband and I have a show of about 30 pieces, all done by Ohio artists in the main hall, the fireside lounge and the library lounge.