TriumphAnt

A story in two parts

Part 1: “I admire your honesty.”

Recently, I opened a savings account that actually offers a moderately attractive interest rate – it’s at President’s Choice and is one of the non-grocery services offered by the Loblaws people about which I have no complaints. (The other is the ready availability of some excellent Ontario wines that are in their in-store Vintages locations, saving the need for a separate trip to the liquor store.)

A simple concept, PCF (President’s Choice Financial) reduces “banks” essentially to kiosks in their grocery stores staffed by one or, at most, two knowledgeable people. PCF levies no fees on all the ordinary little week-to-week banking transactions such as cheque-writing and bank machine withdrawals, which other banks use to make the obscene levels of profit that their investors and shareholders like but the average depositor, with low-maintenance service needs, loathes.

A few months ago Loblaws decided, with very little fanfare, that no longer will they require a signature on grocery purchases under $100 that are made with a credit card. And recently, little signs have appeared at all the checkout stations touting this “service” and adding the apparently encouraging assurance, “With no loss of security”.

Needless to say, this left me more than a little baffled because how, I wondered, can the elimination of the one remaining personal i.d. verification – my signature – maintain any protection against the fraudulent use of my card, were I, for example, to drop it on the way out of the store and have it fall into the hands of a less than scrupulous stranger?

My new account application required an in-person appearance. (That’s another story – the online process requires you to use your Social Insurance Number as i.d. If you wish to use any other piece of i.d., you have to appear in person. I greatly prefer not to use my SIN for this sort of thing. And the nice thing about Canadian law is that you cannot be compelled to use it for anything other than Government of Canada services, which was the original intent of that particular piece of i.d.)

Anyway, I thought that since I was actually meeting a real person face-to-face, I figured I’d seek an explanation. And by the time I was half a dozen words into my question, it was obvious she knew exactly where I was going because this knowing “Here comes another one” smile appeared on her face. Obviously I am not the first person to ask about this, because her reply was issued with all the confidence of someone who not only has memorized the store’s policy talking points on this issue, she clearly has been called upon more than once to employ them in order to answer just this question.

As it turns out, Loblaws – not to mention the credit backers – have a damned peculiar definition of “security”. Because what she told me was, if a bank is faced with a claim of fraudulent use of its credit card, and if the billed amount is less than $100 and if there is no signature, then the bank, by law, has to accept the borrower’s claim and cancel the billing. (No I don’t know what law that’d be. I’m just passing along what I was told by someone who at least projected an air of knowing what she was talking about.)

When she had completed this explanation, I paused for a few seconds while it sank in, then looked at her and said, “Do you realize you’ve just told me a way to get free groceries for the rest of my life?” She laughed – a little nervously – and said, “Maybe for a month or two at most. If they detect a pattern, they’ll cancel the card.”

*Phew* I really feel better about that. (Let’s just say that if the day comes when I see “Loblaws Baghdad Market*: Falafel: $99.00” on my monthly bill, someone’s going to get a call, pattern or no pattern.)

* Did you know that if you Google “Loblaws Baghdad Market” (without the quotes), you’ll get (at this writing) 22,600 hits? You do now.

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Part 2: “Take it. It’s only money.”

In tandem with opening up a savings account, I wanted to obtain a new credit card, in my name, with a maximum allowable billing of $500. My purpose here is to have a card that I can use for online purchasing, online charitable donations and the like, without causing simultaneous shudders on Wall, Bay and Bond Streets were it to be caught up in some hacker’s driftnetting.

My first query went to the helpful young lady who cheerfully advised me of Loblaws “equal security” no-signature-required policy (above). Sadly, she informed me that they could not issue a second card to me in my own name. Oddly enough, they were quite happily prepared to issue me up to three separate cards, each assigned to someone different, who would share my credit limit. Their thinking here is, of course, “Get the missuz and the kids their own credit cards!” Equally of course, all I had to do was sign a form assuming responsibility for all debts incurred on all the other cards. But issue a second, meager-limit card to me? Nope. Can’t do.

After prowling around a few sites online, I opted to apply for a basic no-fee American Express card. “Basic” meaning Air Miles included, the absolute minimum strip-down I could get on a line of cards that began with double-extra-good-platinum-plus-you-can-buy-a-surplus-aircraft-carrier-no-questions-asked-with-this-baby and gradually slid down the scale to “Basic”, which included Air Miles. Which, as a matter of note, I didn’t even want. I had an Air Miles card once. After a year and a half of using it, I had accumulated enough air miles to roll from the Ottawa Airport’s departure gate to the beginning of their east-west runway.

And if you ever doubted the power and integration of the Internet, consider this: The site promised an evaluation and an answer to my application in 60 seconds. That means they are capable of verifying my i.d. and assessing my financial situation before returning either an approval or rejection in less time than it takes to peel an apple.

It actually took even less than that – about 30 seconds later, Whang! Up popped a box on my screen congratulating me, and cheerfully telling me that a full package, with approved card, would arrive within ten days and with a maximum credit amount of $19,000. (“Please contact us if you wish to increase this amount!”)

I didn’t want to increase the amount. I wanted, in fact, to decrease it by a divider of 38. So I phoned Amex and after wading through a pile of options their helpful voicemail compiler figured would be among the most likely reasons people call (“If you are calling to request a decrease in your monthly limit, press…” was not even on the list. What are the odds?) I finally got to press the “If you would like to speak to a customer representative, press...” button in order to talk to a real person.

Who promptly told me to wait until my package arrived and when I called the number to activate the card, I could request a decreased monthly limit at that time. However, I think that policy is a last-ditch effort to get people to change their minds because when I pressed the question (“But I was just given online approval, so I assume the package is not in the mail already! Can you not request a lower limit on this card?”), I received a swift acquiescence. (“Oh you want to request a lower limit? Well I guess I can do that for you.”)

Turns out their lowest limit is $1,000, but I can live with that.

And the world wonders why so much of the population in capitalist countries is mired in soaring personal debt loads.

Just to put a coda to this story, the day after my contact with Amex, I spun the story out for a co-worker and he told me that he heard people seeking credit are assigned an overall “global” credit limit based on a whack of factors like income, previous borrowing history, etc. If you accumulate several cards whose combined limit approaches that amount, the number of new card issuers who will approve an application from you suddenly begins to shrink dramatically. So if you do apply for a new card and you still have a significant gap between the limit you have, and the limit to which you are entitled according to this credit ranking, you shouldn’t be surprised to discover that a single card provider will all but wipe out that gap by giving you a limit that takes all of your remaining allowable monthly borrowing limit and assigns to it one card – theirs. That way, you’ve maxed out your so-called “global” credit ranking on one card, effectively forcing you to make all your credit purchases on that card simply because you aren’t able to get approval for new cards issued anywhere else.

I don’t know if that’s true, but it sure sounds plausible.
…

And finally… I don’t know what title to put on this. But here’s the story. Very recently, I actually bought a CD at Starbuck’s – it’s John Fogerty’s new album, Revival (which, come to think of it, he could have named Reviver and placed its name in an endless circle on the cover… Come to think of it even more, I guess “endless circle” is redundant, not to mention kinda stupid when you think of it. But I digress.)

When I got to the cash, in addition to my long double espresso, I slid the CD across the counter and suddenly noticed the price sticker had two prices: one in $US and one in $Canadian. And the Canadian price was $2 more. And this on a day when I’d heard in the news that the loonie actually closed the day ahead of the almighty greenback.

So being the pain in the ass that I am, I asked the kid behind the cash (and it really was a kid; this guy had to still be viewing his 17th birthday on some distant horizon) why that was. To his credit, ho looked me square in the eye and said, “I don’t know.” At which point a helpful older kid – probably the night manager, cause she had to be at least 18 – came over and offered, “I know the reason. It’s because we can’t keep up.”

So being the pain in the ass that I am (or has someone already said that?), I looked at her and tapped the price sticker. “OK, well then how be you sell it to me for the US dollar price and then you’ll be keeping up?” I said. Now they looked at each other, and at that point I said, “Just charge me the Canadian price; it’s not your fault.”

They seemed relieved.

A couple days ago, my wife, who is infinitely wiser than I, told me she was no longer buying books, effective immediately, until the higher “In Canada” price vanishes. As of tonight, I’m joining her in that. For several weeks, I’ve heard countless bleats from publishers trying to explain away the need for pricing in Canadian dollars that is sometimes 30 or 40 per cent above the American dollar price. And yet not once has any of them sounded the least bit credible. The bottom line is that we are at this moment pouring a pool of profit onto a publishing gravy train in this country and if enough of us just say [EXPLETIVE DELETED], maybe they’ll get the hint that http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQGXi_7ATag (alternatively, we could all channel Howard Beale.) Wouldn’t that make them think? Wouldn’t it just? Just quit buying books in Canada. And then watch how fast those US and Canadian numbers match up.

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À la next time.