Give Me Credit

David J. Danto

Business travel thoughts in my own, personal opinion

eMail: ddanto@IMCCA.org Follow Industry News: @NJDavidD

Give Me Credit – September 2022

The Best Types of Credit Cards for Someone in Debt - Debt.com If you ever get the chance to open my wallet you’ll see that I carry far too many credit cards. Some are affinity cards that I use with just one vendor (MGM, Whole Foods/Amazon, Hilton); some are cards I need to carry – like ones that directly debt my health spending account; some are just back-up cards I haven’t used in years; and a couple are my primary spending cards. My family and I pay for most things on our credit cards – to the tune of about $10k per month. We usually pay-off the bills in their entirety, so the use of the cards is just for the convenience – and the perks. The perks however, along with the needed support from a credit-card company, are getting harder to find.

Some years ago we got-off the airline mileage card bandwagon. Why in the world would a sane person earn a currency that the owner (airlines) can continue to devalue whenever they feel like it? It was a liberating feeling. At the time we were happy to switch ninety percent of our spending to two cards from Capital One – the Venture Card – which allowed us to accrue travel points that we could use to “erase” any travel related charges, and the Savor Card – which gave us 4% cash-back on spending for dining and entertainment. Those were good deals.

Unfortunately we are now in the market for new primary cards. Capital One has done the one thing we cannot tolerate from a business partner. In a dispute with a vendor they completely ignored our evidence and found in favor of the vendor. For an amount under $2,000 they have lost 10K of monthly business.

In our case it was as cut and dry as it could be. As I posted in this prior blog we had a miserable stay at a Sandals resort, called their manager while on site and complained, wrote letters to their executive management, and provided image captures of the promises that they made on their website that were not fulfilled. We opened a dispute with Capital One’s “Transaction Support Center,” gave them all this information as well as the names of the people we spoke with and wrote to, and even provided them with video of ants crawling around our bathroom. Instead of finding in our favor they accepted the vendor’s word that we made no attempt to contact them (even though we had already provided the names and details proving that was untrue – and gave them the link to the video for gosh-sakes) and closed the dispute in the vendors favor.

When a company I do business with proves that they will be dishonest about one thing I lose faith in them because they lose all credibility with me. Capital One has proven to us they are that dishonest about this instance, so we will not risk them being dishonest about anything further. We immediately cashed out the equivalent of about $10K in travel credits and cash back that we had been banking for future use, and are shopping for a replacement primary card. Once we have it we’ll transfer all our daily business to that one. We have a few decent options in mind – none perfect but each with different good and bad points – and we will decide this week.

I share this story with everyone for two reasons. Firstly, I firmly believe that the frequent traveling community needs to share stories about how firms treat them. It is the only way we can be warned-away from future disasters. Secondly, it again reinforces the point to businesses about how hard it is to gain customers and how easy it is to lose them. For the cost of about a grand and a half this firm lost about $10K of spend per month from good customers that always pay their bills on-time. Perhaps they don’t make a lot of money on us in borrowed-money interest, but they have a terrific source of vendor credit-card fees always being collected with no issue. We live in a time when bean-counters are fully in charge of service industries, which as a result often provide service that is lacking. They still don’t understand that losing good customers faster than they can gain new ones is a poor strategy.

So, in my best Henny Youngman-esque, give me credit – please. I’ll let everyone know which card we settle on once we get it done. You can be assured that when you check on what’s in my wallet, it won’t be a card from a company that doesn’t back-up its customers.

This article was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions.

All image and links provided above as reference under prevailing fair use statutes.

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As always, feel free to write and comment, question or disagree. Hearing from the traveling community is always a highlight for me. Thanks!