Canadian Personal Finance Blog

So here is a good example of WHY you should cancel credit cards that you no longer use.

About a month ago I got my monthly CIBC Visa statement. Now, I stopped using this card about a year ago, in favor of a President’s Choice Mastercard (which gives me grocery points). I open the statement assuming my normal 50 cent credit balance (I like pissing off these folks by overpaying by less than a dollar, and thus their systems then send me monthly statements, costing them money), but NO, I owed $60!

So my initial reaction was quite rude, but luckily I calmed down and asked my wife, why do we have a charge on the Visa card for pictures from a company in Calgary? Now my wife is a sensible woman with a good memory, and she remembered that we HAD ordered pictures from this company LAST YEAR (at this time) for our daughter’s band. I went and checked my records and YES they had charged us LAST YEAR and I had paid LAST YEAR. Here is the $60 question, why are they charging me again THIS YEAR?

Phone up the CIBC Visa “I am pissed off” line, young lady is very helpful and says I’ll have to put a “trace” on this charge to get it removed, OK, let’s do that. Then she says I should PAY this and then when the charge is reversed I’ll have a $60 credit. I pointed out that I don’t USE this card any more, so having a $60 credit does me no good. She apologized, but said any Interest charges would be refunded if I didn’t make a payment. What she didn’t mention, is the BLACK MARKS my credit rating might get for NOT making the minimum payments and whether THEY would get “expunged”.

It is now a month later, no news yet, I still have a balance on this card, and I am stewing quietly in my own juices.

The Moral of this Essay?

1. If I had CANCEL‘ed this card, this would NOT have happened in the first place!
2. ALWAYS check your credit card statements (I find at least 1 or 2 spurious charges on my cards EVERY YEAR).
3. With all of the personal information theft going on (if you have GM Visa card, you are now a victim) having the minimum “points of attack” (i.e. credit cards) minimizes your possible damage in this kind of incident.

Keep this one in mind, and maybe figure out just how many credit cards you have sitting around gathering dust. It is NOT an easy task to CANCEL a credit card, but if you miss out on 1 of these possible incidents, it is worthwhile.