Since 1993, when I was still in college, I have had a credit card with a certain company. Right now they call themselves FIA/IBS, but over the years they have been called various things. Well, as I said I have had this card on my credit report for 16 years, making it the longest line of credit I still have had open – until last week when they decided to close my account without even telling me. The card hadn’t been used in about a year, as I only use my Chase Amtrak rewards card now, but I still wanted to keep the card open (due to how long I had had it) and figured I would use it every once in a while to make sure it stayed that way. But FIA/IBS did not see it that way and proceeded to just cancel and close the account…and the only way I found out was because I called to change the address on the card in preparation of my move to Colorado.
When I called the (of course) automated phone tree and entered my credit card number, the robot voice on the other end told me my account was closed. Thinking there must have been a mistake and knowing that I never canceled the card, I waited patiently for 11 minutes until a human came on the line. I asked him about this account and he confirmed that the company closed it a while back due to inactivity. I asked him when they were planning on letting me know this, and he didn’t know if they were ever going to. I was pretty pissed – not because I lost some of my open credit but because I was a customer of theirs for 16 years and they couldn’t even bother contacting me to see if I wanted to keep the card open by using it. No phone call, no email, no letter…nothing. They just decided one day to close the account and ding my credit score a little bit. Thanks FIA/IBS!
The moral of the story? You don’t matter – not that you ever did, really. But I did figure that a 16 year relationship with a company mattered enough to warrant a phone call, but I guess I figured wrong. So if you have any open lines of credit that you haven’t used in a while, I would call and ask about them. You don’t want to go to use it and have it be closed on you, do you? I will be sticking with my Chase card (not that they care either, but I have never had any issues with them) for now, and as for FIA/IBS/Whatever you are called, thank you for breaking up with me. I have no interest in being with a company that couldn’t care any less about a 16 year customer.
Photo from Shutterstock