In recent months the credit card companies (Chase & Discover, mostly) have ramped up their efforts to get me to use “Convenience Checks”. Almost every statement includes a batch of them.
I’ve never liked the fact that they send them … first, and foremost, because I never use them. Secondly, I consider them a serious security risk. If someone rifles through my mailbox (which has no security) and grabs my statement, they could easily cash the checks. Yes, I know I probably wouldn’t be liable for the amount … but it would be a major pain to figure out what was going on.
I finally got around to calling both Chase and Discover to request that my account be flagged so I never get Convenience Checks again.
In both cases, the customer service person I talked to understood my concerns … and updated my account appropriately. I was warned that there might be one ore two more mailings sent out, as the convenience checks are setup in advance … but I can deal with that.
Hmmm … now that I think about it a bit … that doesn’t really make sense … at least in the case of Discover … because the checks are attached to my statement, which is clearly custom printed on demand at the end of my billing cycle.
Oh well, as long as they don’t send me more than 1 or 2 more batches, I’ll be happy.
You’d think that’d be the case wouldn’t you? This isn’t the only place that does the same kind of “1-2 billing cycles” statement. You’d think being computer driven, it’d be nearly instantaneous updates, or near that (5 min batches) or at worse, overnight.
I switched to “e-bill” on a lot of my credit cards. They’ll just email me to tell me it’s ready to see, and send a link to login to my account. That was instant, wonder how they can make turning off credit card bills instant, but not turning off the “convenience checks”.