This comment will answer the obvious question of why some customers think Merrick customer service is great while others think it is horrid. Hopefully, it will also help those who are considering whether, or not, to apply for a Merrick card to better understand what they would be getting themselves into.
I should start by saying that I am a 64 year old retiree and, before I was laid off a decade ago, I was a lead technician of the technical support department of a global Network Engineering company. I have an extremely qualified grasp of what constitutes acceptable customer support. And I also have a good grasp of the games unscrupulous companies play via their customer disservice departments to deceive customers while pretending that their only goal is to serve their customers.
I have had one of Merrick’s credit cards for about a month. Today is the 1st of the month, which just happens to also be the due date of my first monthly statement. Prior to today, because I _KNOW_ banks are shameless scoundrels, I logged into Merrick’s website every day and verified that what they reported online as the status of my account did, indeed, match up with the records I keep manually of my transactions.
Until today, I was able to log into their web site everyday with no problems at all.
Today, for the first time, suspiciously on the due date of my statement, for the past 9 hours, I have not been able to login. I get the screen I get everyday when I log in, but after I enter my user name and password, I get back a message that it is waiting which never updates to anything else.
I have, so far, spoken to three people in their customer service department about this problem. Each of them told me that there is nothing they can do because they can get in fine from their computer. I asked the first one to connect me to her supervisor. Instead, she connected me to one of her peers. I asked her peer to connect me to her supervisor, which she did. Her supervisor then told me exactly what the previous two had told me:
1) They are having no problem at their end.
2) They have no IT customer support who they could transfer me to who could troubleshoot my problem further from an IT perspective.
3) They have not received any other complaints from any other customers reporting a problem like mine.
Okay. Here are my conclusions:
1) It is highly improbable that it is just mere coincidence that, after weeks of being able to log in every day with no problem, the first time I have a problem just happens to be the exact day of my due date.
2) I suspect they were not telling me the whole truth when they said no one else had called in to report any connectivity problems. For a bank on the first of the month, it would be unusual for their customer support department not to handle multiple calls about connectivity problems. Elderly customers, and poorly educated welfare recipients, get paid on the first of the month. They live from check to check and some of them do not have the best understanding of how to use the Internet to do something as simple as log into their bank account.
3) They probably were telling the truth about being able to get in fine from their end. I am a programmer myself. I know _exactly_ how a competent IT tech would enable firewall rules which allow access to in-house employees while denying access to a particular customer on his particular due date. Why would a bank authorize such firewall rules? Because late fees are a significant part of a bank’s profits.
4) Merrick’s ridiculous manner of doing business can easily be prevented from causing you late fees by simply doing as I did. Instead of making the minimum payment on your due date, divide that one payment into multiple payments made every week, adding up to significantly more than what you estimate your minimum payment will be … Ideally, adding up to your total charges for that month. Hence, yesterday when I could log in, the minimum amount due on the 1st was $0.
Remember Sun Tzu’s advice from his “Art Of War”:
ALL WARFARE IS BASED ON DECEPTION