Dealing with Credit Card Companies

by The Piano Guy

In the event of illness and loss of ability to conduct your own affairs, someone is going to have to manage your financial situation.

If you're the stereotypical reader of this great magazine, it is at least as likely that you will be doing this for someone else, most likely an aging parent.  That includes dealing with credit card companies.  Hacker-oriented lessons were learned, hence this article.

As usual, there is information in here that can be used for nefarious purposes.  Please don't.  Electricity can cook a meal for a man, or can cook the man.  Use these tools wisely.  Also, this article gets better towards the end, but there is information in here that I want you to read, so please eat your veggies before going to dessert.

My story starts with mom falling down a flight of stairs and breaking her neck (C2 and C7), shoulder, scapula, and three ribs.

From there, it goes downhill.  After the third surgery, they had to bury her in enough Haldol that dementia kicked in.  On advice of the attorney, before this happened we had her sign over her rights using a general Power of Attorney (POA) and Medical Power of Attorney (MPOA).

These documents gave me the right to act on her behalf and take care of her financial affairs.  The technical term is that I became her Attorney-in-Fact (AIF).  We had to shut down her apartment (where she fell) and moved her legal address out to my brother and sister-in-law's house.

We had to deal with her cell phone provider, banks, insurance companies, the cable company, utilities, the DMV (a completely different hot mess), and more.  Everyone wanted some level of proof that I was supposed to act on her behalf.

Lesson 1:  Don't wait until an injury or illness to get the proper legal representation and documents in place.  Had my mom been brain damaged during the fall, I would have had to go to court to be appointed her guardian, which would have been a much bigger pain to do and deal with.

My mother had numerous department store credit cards, most of which were very old.  The older cards generally didn't have 16-digits on the front.  Most of these were already expired accounts.  However, it is necessary to call and make sure these accounts are truly dead and shut off.  If they are not, then she is more likely to be the victim of identity theft.  Since we had to qualify her for Medicaid (which includes spending her down to a net worth of $2000 plus a car), anything like this would be fiscally devastating, and a royal pain for me to have to fix.  All the cards were chopped up.

Once I explained Mom's situation, considering that most of the accounts were already closed, they didn't ask for my POA papers.  They believed me when I said that I was the Attorney-in-Fact, and confirmed that I already had what I wanted.

Lesson 2:  Get your parent's Social Security Number (SSN) from them while they are still alive.  They probably have yours so they can conduct affairs for you (especially if you're recently or currently a minor).  Turnabout is fair play, and it makes it much easier to manage things in situations like this.

On the couple of occasions that department stores had valid credit cards that weren't a branded Visa or MasterCard, it took more convincing, but I was able to close the accounts.  Fortunately, my mom hadn't used them in quite a while, and I was asking to close the accounts.  It turned out okay.

After those cards were taken care of, there were four cards left: a Sears Gold MasterCard, a pink Discover card, and two Chase credit cards (the one about to expire, and the one that had to be activated).  My goal with these cards was to keep them active, get the address changed to my brother's house, change the phone number, and reactivate the Chase card.

My mother didn't have a net presence.  No email, no computer, no nothing.  So, my sister-in-law (who has been great about helping during this trying time) took advantage of this, but forgot to tell me.

The same kind of thing happened when shutting off the cell phone with Verizon, but I digress.  I was dealing with the automated system and was asked to enter Mom's full credit card number.  I did so.  I was then asked to enter the last four of her SSN.  I did so.  I was then asked to enter her ZIP Code.  I did so, using the old address.  It rejected that.  I tried again, and it rejected it once again.  I got inspired, and entered Mom's new ZIP Code, and it took.  I was then able to get to an agent.  The agent wasn't able to officially talk to me because they didn't have the POA papers on file.  However, by asking the right social engineering questions, I was able to figure out that my sister-in-law already updated the address on the web.  Problem solved.

Lesson 3:  If more than one person is working on this, coordinate efforts.  It is possible now that they realize that the address was changed online, they may shut off the card.  Let's hope not.

Lesson 4:  Use technology when you can.  Then came Discover.  With either mom's full SSN or the last four (can't remember which), and her mailing address, I was able to change her address and phone number strictly through the automated voice recognition system.  I never had to talk to a person, and it took about 3-5 minutes tops.

Lesson 5:  Close your Discover account - their security absolutely sucks.

Chase was the most important card.  It had the highest credit limit, the most recent renewal, and the most penetration.  Unfortunately, my mom will probably expire before the card does.  It was also among the most instructive.

When I phoned, things seemed to go very well.  I called them first, and I thought the whole project was going to be a breeze.  Then they asked me for the POA papers.  Having them scanned in, I asked where to email them.  I was told they had to be faxed.  I got the fax number, and then asked when they would be in the system.  They told me "two hours."  I was fine with that, as I had to be up that long anyway.

Lesson 6:  Work within the system.

Three hours later, I called, and was directed to a supervisor, who told me that he couldn't help me.  I told him that I had faxed the papers in.  He told me that he saw that, and saw them, but that they had to be mailed.  This wasn't acceptable to me for a few reasons.  First, why would they give me a fax number if faxing the POA papers in wasn't acceptable?  Second, there was no guarantee that the papers wouldn't get lost, and draw out the process.  Third, we were trying to qualify my mom for Medicaid by the end of the year.  Had we not done so, she would be on-hook for another month of private pay at the nursing home at about $7,000 a month.  Had we qualified her and not resolved the credit card situation before, she may not have been able to keep her credit.  Needless to say, I was not happy, and let the supervisor know as much.  I asked to speak to his supervisor, and was told he didn't have a supervisor.

Lesson 7:  Don't believe everything that everyone tells you.

I called back the next morning, got a representative on the phone, and did with ease what I should have been able to do the night before.  The POA papers were there, but I had to prove that I was the Attorney-in-Fact.  The woman figured that I should know my maternal grandmother's maiden name.  I didn't.  I had never thought about that, as she was dead long before I was an idea.  Not having my grandmother's maiden name was a show stopper.  Then, the woman on the phone gave me the hint I needed.  She told me the first letter.  It was the first letter of some cousins' last names.  There are other places that name shows up too, but for me to say it in this magazine would open us up to identity theft, so I can't go there.

Lesson 8:  Ask your mom what her mother's maiden name is.

Lesson 9:  Social engineering works.  The woman had pity on me to give me that hint, which opened the door.

With my grandmother's maiden name, the woman at Chase decided I was the Attorney-in-Fact, and I was allowed to change the address, phone, and activate the new card.  I also had the representative lodge a complaint against the "supervisor" that wasn't really a supervisor (see Lesson 7).

So now my mom has an emergency credit bank that we can use that should last at least through the next few years.