MONSTROUS CONSUMER RIP-OFFS
HEIGH HO, SILVARADO. LOS BANDITOS PLASTICOS RIDE AGAIN:II
STEVE LOPEZ & THE L.A. TIMES
Since 1991 I have been writing about the Plastic Bandits, and making comparisons between the Banking Industry today compared to the Saving's Banks of the past, and bankers who taught you to save before you spent money. There is little or no comparison in my opinion, because today's banks have literally become thieves and liars, a development that began with the issuance of plastic charge cards fifty years ago. My other pages cover some of the numerous issues, but there is no definhitive work on the subject, as there well should be by now, if the financial writers had any common sense and the balls to attack the banking industry, starting with Citibank (Citicorp), of course.
Well, if it is not the banks and their cohorts defrauding YOU with plastic, then its the rip-off artists (identity thieves) and as Steve Lopez, of the L.A. Times reports, the banks become "after the fact" accomplices in these thefts.
Now, I must interject here that although I have subscribed to the LAT for more than 50 years, their Liberal columnists (and editors and reporters) often have me close to puking up my breakfast, and this includes Lopez. If you could view my local TV program, you'd quickly learn where I stand.
But Lopez renders a public service in his recent column where he describes how Identity Thieves ripped off his bank account through his ATM service for $6,000, then his bank gave him credit for it, followed by a finding that they were not at fault and BINGO, RING ALL THE BELLS, they charged back the six grand to HIM. What in the Hell did he expect, especially if he was banking with B of A (which he does not admit to doing)?
Leapin' Lizards, Sandy, can you imagine? That's why I never use an ATM, nor do I have a pin number. For one thing, I know people who keep running to the bank for $20 and pay $1.50 each time they withdraw cash. They're bonkers. They pay $7.50 to withdraw $100 of their own money? It's crazy. It's stupid. Do you think that by carrying cash you're going to encounter a guy with a gun who'll rob you? That's the fiction the banks used to sell us on using plastic credit cards, plastic debit cards and the ATM's. I'm 81 and I haven't been held up a single time in my life, and during the war (yes, the big one), I'd pay off with over a thousand dollars cash money (no checks) after a long voyage (that's like three or four grand today) and hit the bars in New York before heading home for New Haven. I've been in dives in 28 different countries and never lost a dime. Risky, stupid, sure, but I was young.
After the war I traveled the 48 states with a magazine crew, and never had less then $300 in my pocket and often a couple of grand, and never lost a dime then. Do you think I'm going to hand a percentage of every dollar I earn over to the banks because they put drawings of thieves with guns in their ads? They should be paying me interest on that dough, the way I look at it, so they're the crooks.
Well, Steve fought back in his column and stirred up a hornet's nest; thousands of people have been victimized that way he finds. If we were to know the truth, it is more likely a million people or more. Check the labels in the executive suits, dear people, and they're probably from Armani, top names that the Mafioso thought would give them legitimacy, to the chagrin of the manufacturers...of course. It's probably a favorite with the CEOs in the banking industry too. Plastic was to be our salvation, our protection, from crooks with guns. Instead it opened our bank accounts to the depredations of the bankers as well as the crooks (or, in many cases, they seem one and the same).
Steve Lopez is angry. He has every rigtht to be angry. So do we all, as the banks have a stranglehold on the business owners of America and the consumers too. Plastic is their key to YOUR bank account, to my bank account, and to every business in America (or close to it). If you keep more than $200 in any account accessible with a Debit card, you're foolish, you're inviting trouble, and you're bound to get screwed (if you'll pardon my use of that word, but it is the most accurate and descriptive word I can think of).
Well, Steve Lopez has gotten his money back, but YOU won't. You do not have access to a large daily newspaper column. There are so many ways that thieves can gain your secrets that you don't even stand a chance once your name hits their radar screen. They've got people in Africa, for example, with computers, who access every single corner of the world in seconds, who do nothing all day long but probe for names, in Liberia, in Somalia, anywhere, everywhere, and they can get to you. The banks do not employ genuises to protect you. They don't pay enough for them. They've got holes in their systems large enough for the Queen Mary to pass through...without a pilot.
Steve Lopez has been made whole again, but being a Liberal does not mean he is stupid. He'll ditch the ATM card and learn to use cash ande checks, I am sure, or, he'll have a separate ATM reserve account.
PS Steve: Go to: http://www.ripoffreport.com
AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MILES, BEYOND OUR COMPREHENSION
It would take the skills of a couple of top-flight accounting firms to come up with a figure for the number of accumulated credits at all the Charge and Credit Card companies to determine the amount of earned AIR MILES they owe to consumers. It is well into the hundreds of billions of miles, and more than likely...substantially over a trillion miles.
There are only a limited number of seats available on each flight for passegners cashing in their AIR MILES, so that others must patiently wait until their opportunity comes along. There are no guarantees of the availability of those seats. In the meantime these cardholders keep adding to their totals, so that it is not uncommon for many of them to have banked 150,000, 250,000, 500,000 or more miles.
This puts the Credit Card Cartel and the Airlines in a position where it is probably not possible to fulfill all their commitments, or cash in all those "Bankable" miles, even if the U.S. air fleet was double or triple its current size, and flew only those holding Air Miles for the next ten years or more. Common sense alone should tell us all that. But, we, the American people, love to live under illusions, and free Air Miles is the greatest illusion ever conceived. Call in your accountants and mathematicians; let Kenneth Lay and Enron rest for awhile, for this, as a gigantic hoax (that undoubtedly began as a smart business promotion), has gotten wildly out-of-hand and no one knows how to put the brakes on it.
The airlines would go broke selling each seat at .02 cents a mile, coast to coast, L.A. to New York for less than $60 a seat! The numbers simply don't crunch. There are too many variables. Of coure, the Banditos Plasticos always have a clause with an "out" in the small print, allowing them to change the Terms of the Agreement at will, but the merchants don't have such an option. Our banking system and their attorneys are pretty clever at this sort of thing.
ONE ANSWER: PAY OFF AIR-MILEAGE AT THREE CENTS A MILE!The only fair answer to the problem is for the Bandito Plastico to pay off the consumers at the rate of three cents a mile (compensate them with an extra penny a mile for all the work they went to in order to accumulate those miles, stop stealing from the merchants and crediting future Air Miles, and then to reimburse all Retail Merchants and businesses for their sustained losses for the past ten years for this foolish and costly "scheme to defraud".
The rich have the ability to take advantage of this situation, because they literally get their miles "free" (well, out of the Retailer's pockets, of course), but low income people have nothing but credits, and a heavy credit card debt. They'd welcome that refund, believe me.
If a cardholder has 2,000 miles, send out a check for $60.00. If they have 150,000 miles, send them a check for $4,500. That'll give them enough money to take a couple of trips First Class and end the thing. It's an easy out for Citibank, Wells Fargo and all the other participanets in this plan to defraud Retailers (23 million of them world-wide), and it will reimburse the consumers for all the wasted time and energy. It'll help to restore some faith in the system, instead of the current situation where they're issuing mileage certificates of credit like the double-diget inflationary German Marks and the Italian Lira after World War I.
NEXT STEP: A GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATION
Before the shredders at these Multinational Banks begin blowing fuses in their haste to cover their tracks, all the original documents concerning air mileage should be checked to see just what the estimates were, and how aware they were of the fact that they were about deceiving and looting the merchants profits. Then theree should be an investigation of the internal estimatates they've made over the years about the used and unused air mileage.
If it is found that they have ignored the warning signs, is it possible to find that there is fraud and collusion involved? That's for D.A.'s and U.S. Attorneys to look at, not me, but the thought has crossed my mind many times over the years. No matter what, there is a winding trail of duplicity and the Multinational Banking Industry is at the heart of it. Again, the Robbing Hood theory, steal from the one and give to the other. Steal from the sellers (Merchants) and give to the buyers (Consumers), and the Evil Axis (Banks) are the Robbing Hoods...riding a black horse. There's one problem, instead of bleeding Robbing Hood to death, each and every Air Mile is a drop of "Retailers" blood. They're put a needle in the artery and drop by drop they're draining it every day, and they have 23 million of them to drain!
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