Women in Comfortable Shoes

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12/09/2003: "House of Cards"

A couple of weeks ago, I bought an iBook. Yes, another one. The G4 iBook was just too sexy to ignore. Besides, Mel, being the lucky girl she is, gets the cast-off G3 iBook, which is barely a year old.

I paid for the iBook with a credit card I use only occasionally and on which I never let a balance accrue. The iBook arrived less than 10 days later, all the way from Taiwan by way of Alaska, Indiana, and Memphis, Tenn. The day after, I received a letter from the credit card company's fraud department asking that I call them immediately. So I did.

They wanted to make sure the iBook was an authorized charge. But why did it take a week and a half for them to contact me? A thief would have cleaned me out by the time they got around to notifying me that something might be amiss.

The next day, I got a letter from the company of another credit card I have, indicating that they noticed I hadn't used my card in three months. If I don't charge something with that card by Dec. 22, my account would be closed.

This card has a fairly high limit, so I use it to purchase big-ticket items where I already have the money but I want the extra protection a credit card provides. Needless to say, I was speechless at this overt attempt to blackmail me into using their card.

My first impulse was to call them and cancel the damn thing. But then I would lose the security it offered. Instead, I added them to my iTunes account. I love iTunes, but I only allow myself to buy a couple of songs per month. I wonder if a $2 charge each month will keep them happy?

So there you have it. One card company contacting me because I used their card. Another contacting me because I haven't. What's a girl to do?