@tinuviel wrote:
@Jutz wrote:
@enharu wrote:
How do you differentiate between a good and bad lender, especially if they have products that cater to people with not-as-good credit? Even American Express has product(s) that cater to people who have downright horrible credit (oasis program). Does this mean Amex is a subprime lender?
Another thing to note is that most lenders have a tiered customer service system. Depending on your internal score, which is influenced by many factors including profitability, spending, risk, etc. and also the type of product you have, that will influence the tier, and sometimes location, of customer service reps that will be answering your calls. One may have horrible customer service experience with chase, citi and Amex simply because they have a cheaper, not-as-good product and low internal score which in turn resulted in horrible misinformed improperly trained CSRs.
This, all of this.
Cap1 gets flaunted as a sub prime lender, but they also serve the prime crowd. If the Venture is right for you, is it not socially acceptable to use the Venture? We tend to try and differentiate between bad and good too often here. There are way too many variables in both product and customer to determine something so black and white.
Agreed. I don't care if it's "socially acceptable" to use my Venture; if it gives me the best bang for my buck from making a purchase, than that's what I use.
+1.
If the fidelity Amex is going to give me the best bang of my buck, I'll even overlook how hideous and disgusting that card looks and use it. At the end of the day it's really just a credit card. No need to overthink about it. It's not like you're choosing your significant other or that you're being forced to sleep with the ugliest chick in the club.
Good customer service may be nice to have, but how often do you actually call them for anything? And if you rarely ever do call them, why does it really matter then? A lot of basic info can be found on the internet, and CSRs are really just there to help you with basic problems. Complex problems usually require analysts / underwriters / managers to look at it anyhow simply because most CSRs do not have the authority to override the system.
The only time good / bad CS matters is with regards to concierge. A good concierge department can help make life much easier. But the "best" concierge services are also usually restricted to the top of the line cards, such as Centurion, Palladium, JPM backed cards, etc. So for most cards this isn't something to even worry about because it's almost non-existent. The internet probably can help you out in a much better way than a subpar concierge service can.
And if you do call CS a lot, that's something you need to re-evaluate. Each time you contact CS, it dings your internal score. I'm not saying you shouldn't contact them at all, but you shouldn't do it over the smallest issue or over something that you think is or could be an issue but really isn't. Call centers are not cheap to set up and maintain, even if they are overseas. Most companies do not like it when customers keep contacting CS. Even Amazon, the "best" customer-centric company, will ban your account if you are contacting them excessively for nonsensical stuff and/or claims.
JPMorgan Palladium (100k), AmEx Platinum (NPSL), AmEx SPG (46k), AmEx BCP (42k), Chase Sapphire Preferred (47k), Citi Prestige (31k), Citi Thank You Preferred (27k), Citi Executive AAdvantage (25k), JPMorgan Ritz-Carlton (21k), Merrill+ (15k), US Bank Cash+ (22.5k), Wells Fargo (12k), Bloomingdale’s (12.4k), Chase Freedom (5k), Discover IT (5k).
