An Open Letter to Chase bank

Dear Chase Bank Liars and Cheats,

Regarding my Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards credit card, I dislike you greatly. Please don’t misunderstand, I like the card itself, just not you.

I applied for this airline miles card while booking our summer vacation flights to Washington, D.C., the place where you should be tried and convicted for fraud and probably also treason.

The offer you presented me was an immediate $200 statement credit, and then 30,000 bonus miles and a companion ticket after I spent $5000 on the card in the first three months. We have three teenage boys who eat everything inside a ten-foot radius of their bodies during all waking hours, so I figured no problem on the $5K.

I clicked yes to your offer, saw my $200 credit on the first bill, and bought $5000-worth of teenager fuel on the new card well before the three-months were up.

Then a funny thing happened. No miles and no companion ticket showed up. OK, I figured, you’re waiting for the three months to expire and maybe a little longer just to make sure I don’t return anything I bought, even though that would be physically impossible. Everything I bought was gone before I could even set it on the counter or put it in the fridge. Seriously, they come out to the car and eat the groceries right out of the bags. We’re raising wolves.

Anyhoo, months past the spending deadline, I dove into my Southwest miles account only to see that you had given me 10,000 miles about a month after I opened the card, and nothing else. Hmm… That’s 20,000 less than you said I was getting, and conspicuously lacking the promised companion ticket.

Here’s where my intense dislike of you begins. I grabbed my file folder and looked at the paperwork that showed up with the card. Nothing at all regarding the deal. I looked for an email from you. Nothing. I found your phone number and called you. After about a month of sweet hold music, your first customer service agent was useless. They had access to less information that I did. It was as if I’d called my neighbor for help.

We escalated to a manager, which required another few years of hold music and empty statements about service and gratitude and loyalty, only to be further disappointed. I know we’re all big on pronouns these days, but your managers are using them wrong. He kept saying “they” instead of “we” when referring to Chase Bank. I called Chase. Who the hell do you work for? Did that first guy just transfer me to his dad?

The end result was that dad put in a “formal request for investigation” to “them” (you), and I received a letter in the mail seven to ten business days later. It said the stupidest thing I’ve ever read, and keep in mind, I have proofread all my sons’ school essays since kindergarten.

We regret to inform you that the 30,000 points and Companion Pass offer has expired as of March 14, 2022 all request will be declined after that date regardless of date account was opened.  

Not only was the grammar in that sentence atrocious, but I opened the account on February 14, 2022. That’s a month before the offer expired. When I pointed out that fact to a different manager after another few decades of hold music, he was similarly powerless to change anything, even after I carefully walked him through the intricate calendar math. He was able to put in another formal request for investigation, but warned me ahead of time that “they” would probably just send me the same letter. Seven to ten business days later, he was proven right.

It was at this point that I decided to sue you. That fantastic dream was soon shredded when I Googled my situation, only to find hundreds of posts on various complaint-based sites detailing someone else’s tale of my exact experience with “them” (you).

Each story came with multiple comments of commiseration from similarly affected consumers, along with tips from trollishly helpful internet bystanders, like, “you should have taken screen shots,” and “you probably didn’t understand which offer you were actually applying for.” Whatever you’re paying those trolls, you should double it. They are exceedingly good at being the exact opposite of what “we” (us) need.

We obviously have the class, but we all know class action lawsuits are useless. You’ll pay out $100 million dollars, which you’ll just take out of your petty cash drawer, the lawyers will get $70 million, and each affected credit card holder will get $1.38.

No thanks.

I spent about three minutes Googling how to sue you in small claims court, but just reading about the process, let alone the process itself, was intolerable.   

So here I am. Mad at “them” (you). Disappointed in everyone involved. And ultimately, pissed off most by the math. I would love to take my little personal stand of decency and morality and ceremoniously shove your Rapid Rewards credit card into my shredder, but I won’t. That’s the part that makes me dislike you the most. The math works. It makes financial sense for me to keep this card, and I am ultimately, at my core, logical and practical.

I hate that.

So, I will keep using this credit card and getting Southwest milage points, but I just want you to know, I’m not happy about it. (I’m happy with the points. Just not you!)

Take that.

Spitefully,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Theft is Finally Illegal

Great news out of Sacramento recently for all you Californians who own cars. So, basically, all of you.

It took ten separate Senate and Assembly bills to get it done (I wish I was making that up), but stealing things is once again illegal.

It is possible that with these ten important new laws, someone hacksawing your catalytic converter out from under your car in the middle of the night could, in fact, be breaking some sort of law now, punishable by some sort of punishment of some kind.

That’s exciting news! For those of you unfamiliar with how the modern automobile works, allow me to explain. The catalytic converter is a metal box in the middle of the exhaust emissions tubular tailpipe system of your car that, in layman’s terms, converts the unwanted and poisonous gas, catalyte, present in your car’s exhaust, into water and pure oxygen using an interior grid filter mesh system made out of platinum, mink fur, and diamonds.

As you can imagine, these devices, about the size of an insurance executive’s wallet, are quite valuable. Roughly seven-eighths of the total cost of your car is the catalytic converter, based on data from top insurance companies and repair shops. The other three-quarters of your car’s value is any other part that gets dented.

Up until the distinguished ladies and gentlemen in Sacramento sprung into action, if a cop pulled over a meth tweaker out cruising the town at two in the morning, and said upstanding citizen happened to have one, two, or even a dozen catalytic converters riding shotgun, the police officer was forced to assume that those very specific and valuable car parts rightfully belonged to this man with no discernable access to personal hygiene products or logical itinerary for his evening.

Having in your possession a grand total of thirty-five cents, six cigarette butts, a hacksaw, and nine thousand dollars-worth of the same loose car part that is commonly stolen due to its value just wasn’t enough probable cause under the old laws.

Apparently too many legitimate catalytic converter supply house drivers on their way to the Chevrolet assembly plant in Antioch were being unfairly hassled by the cops when they got pulled over with nine grimy catalytic converters strewn across the back seat of their crappy ’97 Nissan Sentra with the donut spare on the right front wheel.

Oh, wait, that’s not how catalytic converters are delivered to the auto manufacturers? Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Who could have known? Thank God we have ten new laws to sort all this out.

And never mind the cops’ hands being tied. I mean, the recycling companies that purchase catalytic converters with hacksawed tailpipe remnants on both ends from scabby, strung-out meth heads were obviously powerless to stop this crime wave. How could they have known these things full of precious metals were stolen and not the legitimate property of this skinny, toothless, itchy weasel who apparently owns twelve cars but doesn’t want any of them to ever pass smog again because he needs money to complete the cabinet renovations and granite countertops in his two thousand-square-foot sunroom?

It's just impossible to figure out some sort of system or enforcement that could have stopped that. What a puzzler!

Anyway, with these ten innovative new laws, Sacramento has come through for us big time. Crime is finally illegal again. Catalytic converter theft should stop any second now.

Now if we could just think of some innovative way to make drugs illegal… oh, never mind, I forgot. We’re going the other way on that one.

That should help.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

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The Great Juice Caper

Son Number Two is five years old and is almost two months into his first year of Kindergarten. (We are hoping it’s his first and only year of Kindergarten, but based on our experience, you never can tell.) He has a best buddy in his class named Luke, and he and Luke are as thick as thieves. Actually, they are thieves.

Now, it is no surprise when little kids get into mischief. What is surprising is when two five-year-olds get together, hatch a devious and complicated plan involving simultaneous stealth and deception in two separate houses, and execute the plan flawlessly every day for two weeks unbeknownst to their parents, only getting caught by sheer happenstance.

The silent alarm that these two miniature partners in crime unknowingly tripped came in the form of a casual conversation between a mother and a teacher. My wife was volunteering in Number Two’s classroom one morning, and had a few spare minutes to chat with Mrs. Camarda.

“Your son is a real pleasure to have in this class.”

“Thank you.”

“He is such a sweet boy. He and Luke are inseparable. They are so cute at lunch with their juice.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said he is a sweet boy…”

“No, no. About the juice.”

“Oh, you know. When he and Luke buy their juices at lunch. They think that is so fun.”

“He buys juice at lunch!?!”

“Well, not every day. Sometimes they buy chocolate milk.”

“What!?!”

Upon further questioning, it turns out that the cafeteria at my son’s elementary school sells juice for a quarter and chocolate milk for fifty cents. Number Two and his buddy had been throwing back delicious lunch-time school beverages every day for at least two weeks. Luke’s mom happened to be volunteering on the same day, so she was immediately brought into the conversation to compare notes. Both boys were being sent to school each day with a lunch box and a bottle of water, and neither one had ever been authorized by a parent to purchase any extracurricular liquids, nor was either one ever given any money to do so.

My wife called me later that morning in hysterics. Hysterical laughing, that is. She explained what she had learned, and amazed, noted that Number Two had somehow apparently been leaving the house with money in his pocket every morning without us knowing. The questions were plentiful. Where was he getting the money? When was he getting it? Was he bringing money for Luke, also, or vice versa? Why is juice only a quarter? Can I, as a dad, get in on that? Etc.

As any good parents would do, we weighed our response options. How should we handle this? Should we sit him down and have a talk with him, or booby trap his piggy bank and scare the living daylights out of him? We debated for a while, but in the end, our hand was forced by the sheer lack of information we had. The junior juice larcenists had us in the dark. We had no idea where the money was coming from, so we were forced to talk with him without setting any elaborate trip wire/air horn devices. Oh, well.

Aside from being a key player in a beverage crime syndicate, Son Number Two is generally a very honest and generous boy. We were sure of a few things: If he was getting the money from a piggy bank, it would be from his own. (His older brother, Son Number One, would have been a whole different story.) Also, it was possible that he was funding the whole operation. He would happily buy his friend juice every day without thinking twice about it, and that would put us in the awkward position of needing to praise his generosity while chastising his deception.

As it turns out, each member of the Capri Sun cartel was paying his own way. Upon intense questioning by two moms who were trying very hard not to laugh, both boys sang like canaries. With an odd mix of relief and disappointment, my wife found out that Luke was the mastermind. It was his idea to steal the car, and our son had decided to come along for the joy ride. Number Two had been sneaking downstairs to his piggy bank early each morning to get his daily quarter and secret it into the pocket of his school clothes before getting dressed. As it turned out, Luke didn’t have access to his piggy bank, so he had been swiping coins from him mom’s kitchen change jar that was meant for vacation spending money. Busted!

They were getting together each day to decide on juice or chocolate milk, so they would know if tomorrow would be a one or two-quarter day. That is seriously long-range planning for five-year-olds, and amazing when you compare it to their lack of ability to remember almost anything else about their daily routine. Number Two can’t remember to brush his teeth even though he has to do it every morning and evening. He can’t remember to wash his hands even though he has to do it before every meal. But when it comes to deception and covert refreshment operations, he can remember to hold daily planning meetings, remember what the next day’s cash requirements are, and remember to pilfer the correct amount each morning before dawn. Go figure.

When all the details of the caper were uncovered, the four parents had a good chuckle, but our reactions to the miniature crime spree were mixed. We all had the same general thought, but the men and women viewed it from slightly different sides, as is so often the case.

Both mothers said, “Oh, great. They’re able to fool us already, and they’re only five years old. High school is going to be a disaster!”

Both dads said, “Holy cow. They can already fool us at five years old. That is so cool. I wonder what kind of stuff they’re going to be able to pull off by the time they’re in high school?”

Women are always looking at things so backward.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2011 Marc Schmatjen

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