I Should Have Known

Back in the 1960's my mother had an item which was new to many, and which carried with it great prestige. She was the proud bearer of a credit card. This was before the era of Visa and MasterCard and many, many other big bank sponsored credit cards. This was a card to a very high end department store. Just the fact that you carried it in your purse meant you were of a certain social stature. (By the way, we weren't!)

She carried her card proudly in her wallet, and once in a while we would take the train into New York, have a stylish lunch around the fountains at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and waltz down 5th Avenue, fully intending to use, yes use, the credit card. We would window-shop at Tiffany's and Saks, Bergdorf's and Bloomingdales, but save our incredible buying power for the one and only Lord & Taylor 5th Avenue store. It was sale season.

Sale season at Lord & Taylor meant wonderful clothing at wonderful prices, and Mom was one heck of a shopper. She would check every item of interest on the clearance racks, looking for impeccable sewing skill, perfect pleats, plaids that matched at the seams. Nobody could find flaws in workmanship like my mother. In fact, her expertise has rubbed off on me, so that poorly made clothing items rarely make it into my closet.

But back to the credit card. She would purchase her loot with this magical hunk of plastic, lug it back to our suburban home, and dole it out to me and my sister (after her portion was carefully stored) with stern warnings about the fate that would befall us if so much as a ketchup drop made its way onto the front of one of these outfits. We knew this stuff was special.

Not that she ever purchased anything we couldn't afford. All bills got paid off at the end of the month, so there was never a finance charge associated with this card. Today most card companies find a way to charge you interest by the time you are less than a block from the point of purchase. In fact, I spent seven years of my life in Chicago, and I knew guys out there who would break your knees for less interest than most card companies charge today.

But I digress. The credit card spent most of its lonely existence in the back of Mom's wallet, mostly so her friends would get a glimpse of it as she took out her few dollars to pay for lunch. It was only used once or twice per year, and paid off as soon as we hit the front door to our home. Therefore, it was quite a shock when we received a bill in the mail from Lord & Taylor.

It was more of a shock when you consider that we had moved from suburban New York to a rural area near Syracuse, and therefore had not set foot in the store for close to a year. The biggest shock of all came when she opened the envelope, her hands shaking, to find a demand that she should pay the balance shown in full, $0.00.

After a good laugh and a showing of the bill to all family members, she tore it up and threw it out. You know what comes next, don't you? Right, another bill the following month, with an urgent note that this balance was close to thirty days overdue, and would she please pay the $0.00 immediately! This time it was still pretty funny, but she thoughtfully put a little note explaining the error into the return envelope and off it went.

Yes, you are correct. The following month she received a downright nasty letter informing her that her credit privileges could be revoked and her other creditors (she had none) were going to be notified of her lack of payment. To avoid financial disaster, she had to send them, by return mail, $0.00.

This was before the time when everything in billing departments was computerized. This was not a computer error! This had to be a real human being typing out the specifics of this bill and sending a new version every month with the same old balance due: $0.00. It was starting to get ridiculous. She sent off another letter explaining the situation, and forgot about it. How silly of her to try to thwart the billing office of such an important establishment!

By the time the fifth, and nastiest, letter arrived with the bill attached, she had just about given up, throwing her hands in the air and wondering allowed what she had to do to remedy this situation. My father, a creative sort, had the only answer - "Write them a check!"

So she did. Very carefully and in her very best handwriting, she made out a check to the billing offices of Lord & Taylor for the amount of $0.00. She then placed it in their fancy return envelope with the bill attached. Considering the circumstances, she was annoyed at having to spend money on a stamp, but she did want delivery to go off without a hitch. She placed it in the next days' mail and watched while the postman tucked it into his pouch. There would be no errors in delivering this check to its rightful owner.

She never heard from them again.

There is a moral to this. If one department store could go to that much trouble and expense to collect "nothing" from a customer, just think of the lengths more current creditors would go to to come after someone with a real balance! When I was sent my first card, I should have thought this over very carefully.................