because i can’t really rant about this to my child…

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

I just got through a ‘live chat’ with a customer service rep from the bank that suddenly owns our car loan.  Our car loan was going very well with a bank located in New Jersey, no complaints.  Now the loan is owned by a bank in Spain.  I got the bill YESTERDAY.  It is due TOMORROW.  Our old payment books will not be honored.  Also?  NO MORE GRACE PERIODS.  So… uhm, If my payment is not processed suddenly tomorrow, on its new due date… uhm, I get a late fee and a ding and all of that garbage.

I have worked many jobs, I know what it is like to be that schmuck on the other end… but it seemed to me they were being insulated from the (justifiable) wrath of their newly acquired customers.  CHat?  I tried the phone but was on hold forever.
The person on the other end of the chat kept typing “No grace period, no due date changes, no exceptions”.  I took an extra second of my date to say “Thanks for getting back to me but has it occurred to you that none of us have done anything to deserve this sort of abuse?”  Next answer from “Marcus”: “I can give you a pay off price” and then, once more, “No grace period, no due date changes, no exceptions.”  Screw you, “Marcus”.  Its got to be some sort of acronym or something MARCUS… hmm. Manbot.

So lets move on to our credit cards.   We are great customers.  We use our cards, pay our cards, everything always on time… Last month I panicked when I found our payments changed and our terms changed!  ????  According to the pleasant East Indian man on the phone we had been mailed.  Oh yeah, the mail?  Do you know how much mail from credit card companies we get?  Probably about five a day a few times a week.  I did not say anything to this gentleman since I was happy to actually be talking to a person and given an actual answer.  I meet some of these outsourced work employees as they train (they stay at the hotel I work at sometimes) and I have nothing against them.  I don’t like that everything that can be outsourced is outsourced, but again, they need jobs like we need jobs.  The voice on the phone is just another human being who needs to work as much as I do (if not more).

BUT COME ON.

So now our credit card payments are higher, though we have never made a late payment.  Our terms went from wonderful to crappy without a slacking on our part.  Our car loan belongs to some bank in Spain that doesn’t care about reasonable due date expectations.

Remember how we got cable?  Just basic channels, right?  Well one night we happened to be awake at three in the morning watching something.  The television started to go nuts and soon we found that our stations had changed.  Watchable channels replaced with MORE HOME SHOPPING, THE CATHOLIC CHANNEL, and LOTS OF LOCAL CHANNELS THAT ONLY PLAY INFORMERCIALS.  What the hell?  If we got the converter box we would get nothing because even though we live IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR STATE’S ONLY CITY we get no channels clearly.

We don’t need television.  We don’t.  We pretty much only watch PBS and C-Span.  That sort of stuff we can get other places.

Do we need the credit cards?  I would say so.  If we have nothing to buffer each month it gets a little scary.

We pay soooo much more every month for the same or less quality of life.  It makes me feel hateful, spiteful.  We try so hard.
I feel like we should be able to survive on an income and a half because:

-we eat in and cheaply.  I spend about 35 per person, per week, on groceries.

-I mend our old crappy clothes.  We shop at Goodwill and online for cheap socks and underwear.

-I said 1.5 incomes— I don’t work full time.  I figure the other half of the work week I don’t work is about equal to what I would pay for child care. We don’t have pre-k here.  We have costly child care programs with fancy names and long wait lists.  My child is getting a lot from me at this point so until he meets the age requirements for public school he gets me.

-we live in a small apartment and have almost no furniture

-we only drive our one fuel efficient car to work and do almost everything else on foot

-we pretty much read or run around outside for all of our entertainment.  Our local museum is free on Friday nights.

-we don’t get sick! (well, now I am sick, and that will cost us)

I would like to know a little more about the day to day lives of those people who decide to change the terms and APR of people who pay on time?  What do they eat?  What about the banks who decide against grace periods and hike up late fees?  Where do their decision makers buy their clothes?

Who let all of these people somehow own so much of our lives?

overnight with a sad-sack

Staying up all night when one is in a kind of miserable mood is not advise-able.  I truly tried to make the best of it.

Things I thought about today:

-The letter I got in the mail from my insurance company informing me that the surgery I am having is a lot more dangerous than my doctor let on

-two separations: one on both sides (my side, my husband’s side) of our family… not just the immediate issues involved: I keep feeling sad at the notion that we may be loosing two family members- sort of the same way I lose friends to this big abyss (only to re-surface later on Facebook) I started crying today when I heard that my son and his uncle had the same shoes on.

-Oh yeah, I haven’t had much sleep

-the fact that my brother got out of surgery alone this week (yes, brother and I both have broken insides at the same time.  He has an umbilical hernia) when I was perfectly free to drive him to and from… Why didn’t I think of it at the time?

-money

-it still bugs me that someone in our family was murdered.  I mean- it sort of casts a weird shadow over a period of time

-last year at this time my grandmother passed away sort of unexpectedly and I could not get to the funeral.  I think about that a lot.  She passed away the week before our annual visit.

SO. so.  so.

I stood around talking to a Chinese food delivery guy.  I talk to him every weekend.  He takes solace in our lobby after driving around in the rain delivering to scary places across town where he walks in on drug packaging, porn filming, child abuse… nothing to see here but weary business travelers and families with cranky, over-travelled kids.  Not exactly dangerous- anyway- I like hearing his stories.

I need to perk up!

It is raining and this might actually work out for me.  It will force my guys to stay inside when I am too tired to go out and about with them.  I envision this day of cuddling and movie or bad television watching.  Scratch the television watching thing.  My son does not let us watch television anymore.  Strange, but true.   The only show he wholly endorses is Jeopardy.

I need a birthday party.  Too bad my birthday is in October. Too bad I can’t eat cake!  I need a really big cocktail and a hug.  I feel guilty saying this because i cannot justify hogging and hugs or cocktails when people I know are having worse days.

UG!

Oh well, back to work.   I guess I can look forward to talking to ‘drops of the newspapers guy’ or ‘cabbie that comes in for coffee before he takes guests to the airport guy’.  It is me, them, and the Chinese delivery guy. Yup.