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Letter to the editor

City Life

Along on the shopping 'spree': it's Big Brother

By SANDRA THOMPSON
Published May 7, 2005

Last month the president of - let's call it - MegaBank sent me a card inviting me to use his bank's credit card for the next month or so, and I would get a 10 percent credit on everything I bought up to $1,000, compliments of MegaBank.

"It's like your own private sale," said the card.

Aren't banks wonderful?

So I moved that particular card from the stack of credit cards I have somehow acquired but don't use - or cancel because it would hurt my credit rating - to the most prominent place in my wallet.

I started using the card for everything: groceries, lunch, running shoes. It would add up.

That weekend I went to International Plaza. At Nordstrom I bought jeans and a Ralph Lauren cotton shirt (on sale) - nothing major - and charged them on the bank card.

Then I bought some stuff at J. Jill, but to get 10 percent off, I opened a charge account there.

Next I went to Dillard's. I was looking at two pairs of sandals, identical except for color. I couldn't decide between the red and the black. I was in a hurry to beat the storm brewing outside, so I decided to get both and maybe return one later. The sales associate rang them up. I slipped my card through, thinking that since the bank was giving me 10 percent back, my $240 total would be only $216.

The card would not go through.

I just used it at Nordstrom, I said.

She tried again. It didn't go through.

And again.

I used another card; it went right through.

The following day a man from MegaBank called me. He gave me his name, which I promptly forgot.

"Did you use your card yesterday at a department store?" Mr. Bank asked.

I said yes, and I had tried to use it at another store, and it didn't work.

Yes, well, you rarely use this card, Mr. Bank explained. And, he said, all of a sudden there were all these charges - first you stopped at the gas station, then the department stores. We thought someone might have gone on a shopping spree with your card.

A shopping spree! Even my husband would not call two pairs of sandals (admittedly not cheap, but I have difficult feet), jeans and a shirt a shopping spree! The total, had the Dillard's purchase gone through, was about $360.

Does Mr. Bank have any idea what women's clothes cost? Where does his wife shop? (Maybe I should have asked.) And $360, incidentally, is thousands of dollars below the ridiculously generous limit the bank has given me.

But Mr. Bank never would have let me get anywhere near it!

Then I felt guilty. I shouldn't have bought so many things! I had forgotten that the J. Jill purchases weren't even charged to the bank card. When I remembered, I was relieved. Mr. Bank didn't know about those!

Or did he?

He knew I had stopped for gas. I had forgotten that. Did he also know the route I drove from the Shell station to International Plaza? Did I break any traffic regulations on the way there? What had I been wearing? I felt like Mr. Bank was sitting there in his office somewhere in Delaware or South Dakota or one of those other states where bank card headquarters are located, watching a video of me driving across Boy Scout Boulevard.

Suddenly the fear of Big Brother, something I had always felt was overblown by friends who think their phones are tapped and value their privacy more than it's worth, hit home.

Mr. Bank was watching me. Mr. Bank did not allow me to make purchases on my very own credit card - even after his boss, the bank president, had offered me a special deal to do just that!

Is this what things have come to?

Mr. Bank was very nice, almost apologetic. "We were just trying to protect you," he said.

Oh, thank you, I said. I appreciate it.

And, ultimately, I guess I did.

Sandra Thompson, a writer living in Tampa, can be reached at sandrathompson1@mac.com City Life appears on Saturday.

[Last modified May 7, 2005, 01:01:10]