A Dragon in Sheep’s Clothing

Just had an interesting converstaion with a rep at my credit card company.

I wanted to make a balance transfer, but I didn’t see a link online to do so, and the help pages didn’t tell me what to do. So I sent a message online. The reply told me that there were “no balance transfer offers available.”

I tried to reply to the message, but kept getting an error message (maybe because I upgraded to the latest version of Java). So I called instead.

My question was, “If there are no special offers for balance transfers, does that mean I am prohibited from making any balance transfer requests at this time?”

The answer is, “Yes.” It’s not that there are no special offers available. It’s that I have not been selected to have that ability.

The interesting part to me was that accounts are selected completely at random for these balance transfer offers. According to the script provided to the phone reps,

1. The Marketing department creates a consumer profile. (The rep didn’t know how they create it; his script merely said that they do.)
2. The profile is sent to an outside agency who selects consumers (not necessarily card holders) who meet the profile.
3. The list of consumers is sent to a third party who randomly selects individuals to receive the balance transfer offer. If you’re a card holder, great. If not, you are offered the credit card along with the balance transfer.

In other words, the

1. longevity of my account,
2. current or past balance on the card,
3. current or past activity on the card; and
4. current credit rating

…do not directly affect whether I am allowed to make a balance transfer to my card.

It’s all a crapshoot.

How disappointing.