{"id":8321,"date":"2009-09-22T20:00:19","date_gmt":"2009-09-23T00:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/?p=8321"},"modified":"2009-09-22T20:00:19","modified_gmt":"2009-09-23T00:00:19","slug":"update-a-misguided-stand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/update-a-misguided-stand\/","title":{"rendered":"Update: A Misguided Stand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, I told you about a Bank of America customer, Ms. Ann Minch<\/a>, who made a YouTube video in protest of her interest rate being hiked.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At that time, I applauded her for her strategy of making a public appeal to executives, yet criticized her for encouraging people to default on their credit card debt in protest.<\/p>\n

BofA Caves<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now comes word <\/a>that her strategy worked, for her.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Specially, she did hear from a BofA executive with whom she was able to negotiate her rate down.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The article reports that her video received 240,000 views on YouTube, and that she has since posted a follow-up video boasting of her victory.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is unclear if she still is encouraging others to default on their credit card debt.<\/p>\n

Conclusions<\/strong><\/p>\n

No matter what your grievance with a company is, they will cave if you can give them enough bad publicity, or make a credible threat of doing so. \u00a0\u00a0 So long as her YouTube rant continued to be viewed, it was only a matter of time before the bank decided the bad publicity was not worth it. \u00a0 This is called the Unscrewed method, as described by Ron Burley in his book <\/a>by the same name.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The idea is that companies, large and small, are in business to make a profit by any means necessary.\u00a0\u00a0 Some may still believe that the customer is always right, but most just want to make as much money as possible.\u00a0\u00a0 According to Burley’s book, often the only way to compel a company to do the right thing is to take actions that will make it in their best interest to give you what you want.<\/p>\n

When seen through this paradigm, it is clear that BofA thought they had more to gain by acceding to her demands than not.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes, it takes some creativity and a little bit of chutzpah<\/a> to successfully pull off an Unscrewed attack.\u00a0\u00a0 A close relative of the unscrewed attack is the Executive Email Carpet Bomb<\/a> (EECB).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This is the strategy of sending your complaints directly to the executives of a company, rather than be denied by customer service.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I personally have had success by combining the EECB with the Unscrewed method.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When I have been seriously mistreated, I merely threaten to make my complaints public in an email to a company’s executives.\u00a0\u00a0 It is not an empty threat, and companies prefer to do the right thing before I go public, rather than after I publicize their mistreatment.\u00a0\u00a0 In the end, everyone wins.<\/p>\n

Where She Went Wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n

What bothered me about her approach was that she was encouraging others to behave in an irresponsible way.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 If she wants to ruin herself financially, or threaten to do so, that is one thing.\u00a0\u00a0 It is an entirely different thing to incite others, who may not be very savvy, to ruin their own finances to be part of her “revolt”.<\/p>\n

Over at CreditLaw.com, they have an interesting post<\/a> detailing some of the consequences of her threatened actions, and some of the steps that could have taken.<\/p>\n

The other thing that I found objectionable, was her personalization of the problem in which she referred to Bank of America executives as “evil, thieving bastards.”\u00a0\u00a0 Just because a company raised the interest rate they are charging you, that doesn’t make it right to slander people.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It is acceptable to refer to a policy or practice as being evil or thieving, but not individual employees of that company.<\/p>\n

Finally…<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have never actually used an EECB or the Unscrewed method on a credit card company.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The credit card business is an extremely competitive marketplace, especially when you pay your bills on time and maintain a good credit score.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When I have problems, I often get them fixed very quickly over the phone on the first try.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 That is rarely the case with the airline industry for example.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When my problems are not resolved quickly, I can always just cancel my card, another benefit of not carrying a balance.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are so many other cards to choose from, I don’t loose much sleep over dumping a bank that is not acting reasonably.<\/p>\n

Ann Minch put herself in this situation by incurring debt on a credit card that can vary it’s rate at any time.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 She got out of this fix with a clever video in which she threatens to default on her debt while encouraging others to do the same.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I am glad she had her situation resolved, but I hope none of her viewers were inspired to follow her off a financial cliff.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Read more at: http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2009\/09\/21\/ann-minch-triumphs-in-cre_n_293423.html<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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