Seniors’ Bank Cards: Stop Switching Them!

Three times in the last 12 months my mother has received a phone call from her bank credit card company telling her she has a wonderful opportunity to receive a new card. Three times she’s been made to feel like she has to do it.

So suddenly Mom has a new card, a new number, and a huge amount of unexpected changes to make in her business files. The first time when it happened, I wasn’t that irritated. The second time I was quite irritated. Now I am livid!

Mind you, the calls are not coming from a different bank credit card company trying to make her switch companies. Instead her own credit card company is switching her to a different card, and I assume that they make better money on the new card which they are sending, though my mother always pays her full balance each month.

Now my mother, age 83, is a power computer user. She has her files, her community service, her book club, her bills, her church work, her banking — everything — well-organized. She is digitally smart and doesn’t click on stupid messages that might give her computer a virus. Moreover, she does not pay attention to the urban legends that many of her friends continue to send her. My mom does not create unnecessary work for herself.

But when a nice, well-spoken person from the bank credit card company calls her and makes the case for sending out a new card, she feels like she has to go along. When she gets the different card, she has to go through her entire bill-paying list and change the number — an enormous amount or work. No one should do this three times in a year — let along someone who is 83 years old.

I only found out because I have a copy of her card, and she kept sending me the new ones. Two summers ago both my parents went into the hospital at about the same for short stints, and I was left to run house for a few days. At that point we decided to get an extra bank card for me so that I could run the house, buy groceries, get prescriptions, and do other tasks, when necessary.

Note to bank card companies. Stop doing this to seniors!