How would you improve credit card customer service? Via Shutterstock
I love credit cards, and I also hate them. Hubs and I recently decided to limit our monthly credit card spending to $2,000. (We are successful the majority of the time). To do this I log in twice a month to check how we are doing. It takes me 10 minutes – but couldn’t my credit card company make this possible through a simple email alert?
Credit card companies could easily make our lives easier if they offered a few tools to help us monitor our spending. Of course, this would lead to more responsible spending and fewer fees for them. (Americans pay millions in credit card fees annually.)
I want to see credit card companies provide the following tools.
1. Ability to create an alert for when my spending total equals a certain amount. I’d love to be able to peg my spending total to a specific point in my cycle. For instance, if this credit card monitoring tool were available, I’d set one alert for $1,000 two weeks into my cycle, and a second alert for $1,500 three weeks into my cycle to help Hubs and I make our goal of spending no more than $2,000 on our credit card.
2. Ability for users to create an alert for spending out of state. For those of us who live in small states, it would be great to be able to check off “safe” states so we don’t get declined for making a purchase across the border. We would also update the states for trips and even add international “safe” countries for trips abroad.
3. Designation on our monthly statement for who made what charge. This would be insanely useful for accounts where more than one person has a card – ESPECIALLY IF ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE IS A TEENAGER! With this tool, I could quickly scan my monthly statement and check the charges I made, versus the ones my husband made. This would also reduce confusion over illegal charges. Right now, unless we look at our credit card statement together, it’s easy to dismiss an unfamiliar charge as something my husband probably spent.
4. Ability to receive an alert for when our credit cycle has ended. I always forget the exact date. Is it 30 days after the end of my previous cycle, or is it tied to the last day of month? I’m pretty sure it is 30 days, but that means the last day of my cycle changes often, making it hard for me to track our total spending.
5. Ability to opt out of receiving checks for spending advances on my card. I HATE THOSE THINGS. It’s a waste of money for my credit card company to send them to me. And it’s dangerous for my personal security – they are essentially sending a blank check through the mail.