Rate Tarts
May. 4th, 2005 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peterbirksI see that the initiator of the "free balance transfer" farce — Egg — has introduced a 2% balance transfer fee "to discourage rate tarts". The disingenuousness of this is mind-boggling. I really would like to be at a press conference one day with these wankers. "Er, so you think that people should voluntarily pay more than they need to, and that looking around for a better price is morally wrong, do you?" "Well, no, but..." so why the pejorative term "rate tarts"?.
But the real disgrace is that it was the credit card companies that offered it in the first place, presumably thinking that customer inertia, that system that they have exploited for so many decades, would keep the customers once they started charging 19.6% interest. They were then SURPRISED that the customers promptly moved to SOME OTHER CREDIT CARD that was offering zero per cent interest. So, you have a choice, pay zero per cent, or pay 19.6%. "I'll take the zero per cent please, Bob". "Ah, well I'm afraid that makes you a rate tart". "Oh dear Bob, is that bad?"
This moral high horse is from companies that routinely shift maturing bonds into accounts that pay interest rates of 0.1%, companies that will not allow people with power of attorney over their parents' finances to park the money in anything other than the lowest interest-rate-paying account possible. It's from companies that want us to borrow more and more money and will not be happy until 50% of our expenditure is taken up in interest payments. Hell, it worked for the third world.
Poker has cleverly appropriated the phrase "bonus whore" as a compliment. I proudly proclaim myself to be an "airline whore" when people ask me which airline I use to fly to the US. Perhaps we should introduce "www.rate-tart.com", and embrace the intended insult.
BTW, for those wishing to piss of some bank people, I recommend walking into any NatWest branch and asking "is this the Royal Bank of Scotland?"
But the real disgrace is that it was the credit card companies that offered it in the first place, presumably thinking that customer inertia, that system that they have exploited for so many decades, would keep the customers once they started charging 19.6% interest. They were then SURPRISED that the customers promptly moved to SOME OTHER CREDIT CARD that was offering zero per cent interest. So, you have a choice, pay zero per cent, or pay 19.6%. "I'll take the zero per cent please, Bob". "Ah, well I'm afraid that makes you a rate tart". "Oh dear Bob, is that bad?"
This moral high horse is from companies that routinely shift maturing bonds into accounts that pay interest rates of 0.1%, companies that will not allow people with power of attorney over their parents' finances to park the money in anything other than the lowest interest-rate-paying account possible. It's from companies that want us to borrow more and more money and will not be happy until 50% of our expenditure is taken up in interest payments. Hell, it worked for the third world.
Poker has cleverly appropriated the phrase "bonus whore" as a compliment. I proudly proclaim myself to be an "airline whore" when people ask me which airline I use to fly to the US. Perhaps we should introduce "www.rate-tart.com", and embrace the intended insult.
BTW, for those wishing to piss of some bank people, I recommend walking into any NatWest branch and asking "is this the Royal Bank of Scotland?"
