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From: smeier@ihuxt.UUCP (S. Meier)
Newsgroups: net.consumers
Subject: Re: Sears Credit Cards (Silliness)
Message-ID: <292@ihuxt.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 2-Mar-84 14:28:18 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxt.292
Posted: Fri Mar  2 14:28:18 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 3-Mar-84 23:24:40 EST
References: <355@clyde.UUCP> <2747@lanl-a.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 31

>Sears credit card department has another **NEAT** feature.  When you
>move out of one of their billing regions you *DON'T* just mail your
>payments to a different address; you *must* get a new credit card
>complete with new account number!  Think of all of the possibilities
>for error. 

Something about your card number tells them where it was issued.
When I graduated from U of Illinois, I got a Sears Credit Card,
Two months later, I moved to Los Angeles to attend graduate school at
USC.  Soon after I arrived there, I decided to buy a color television at
Sears for ~$250 (my credit limit was $350).  The salesman took one look
at my credit card, and said, ``Oh, this is from Chicago.  Go up to the
credit department.'' Which I did.  They made me fill out an application
for transfer of credit.  I pointed out that the credit card had printed
on it: 
        "Use this card in any Sears store anywhere"

which made absolutely no difference to anyone there.  The next day they
called me up to tell me that my application for credit was rejected because:
 
a.  I had not lived at my current address long enough.
b.  I had never used my Chicago-issued Sears card.

So I went to Montgomery Wards and bought a television with my American
Express (no questions asked).  About one week  later, I got a new credit
card from Sears of California, with the same credit limit I had had in
Chicago, sent automatically when I sent in my change of address.  What a
bunch of bloody useless loonies!

Steve Meier
Naperville, Il.