#95 Checking the Mail

I just got done doing what I never had to do 20 years ago, shredding my junkmail. Progress. If there’s one thing wrong with the 21st century, it’s bankcard company junkmail. They’ve used junkmail to help bring about a new spin on electronic checking. Apparently, if they send you some notice that you’re not aware you’re getting in midst of the reams of junkmail they send out, companies can now electronically access your bank account when you send them a check. You don’t have the float anymore during the time it takes for a check to clear from back in bankcard-offshore-haven-New-Jersey and your own local bank. Fair enough, I guess, after all you should have the money in your bank if you’re gonna write the dang check.
Many of the bankcard companies used the same strategy to eliminate or shorten the grace period on purchases. Used to be, you had a full 30 days from the time you got your bill till interest started to accrue on your purchase. Now you get 20 days from the date of purchase. It’s actually possible to start owing interest before you even get a bill. Now that’s progress. And, of course, another big change is that it’s no longer possible—thanks to one of those acts of congress we’re always hearing about—for a personal bankruptcy to exempt you from paying your bankcard bill. Joe’s hardware store, local businessman down the street, can get screwed out of the bill you owe him but Megabuck-Citichase-Banka-Master-Express can collect every last nickel. Joe needs a better lobbyist. In my dictionary by the way, the word “congress” is also defined as a sexual union. So it’s no wonder acts of congress often end up screwing somebody.
So tell me this, Qwai Chang. Why is it that with identity theft on the rise; with a huge recent scandal about bankcard records being hacked into at a master computer clearing house bill center—compromising untold identity and privacy records—with not a day going by that someone doesn’t report a rifled mailbox; with the bankcard companies so afraid of bankruptcies that they get a law passed to protect them; that the idiots keep sending bankcard offers in the mail? And worse, that every third one contains preprinted checks with your name on them that any yahoo could take in and pass through the in-training teller that all minimum wage paying mega-banks always have?
What’s wrong with this picture? You don’t want me to spend too much, but you send me offers for a bankcard in my name, my wife’s name, my ex-wife’s name, my dog’s name and a feminized version of my own name. You’re afraid of identity theft, yet you send me freaking blank checks through the mail. And worse, the envelopes always say “important offer open now” so any dimwit could tell they’re worth stealing, and even worser, I don’t even know the dang things are coming, like, say, my own box of regular checks—which, by the way, I pick up at my bank—so my identity, my bankcard balance and my credit rating are totally exposed to theft. Personally, I think the bankcard companies must own some major stock in companies that manufacture shredders. I can’t remember the last time I put a whole piece of junkmail into the trash
America, ya gotta love it.