Free Insurance

I've had the opportunity to call and activate a fair number of credit cards. I've been issued new cards due to the old one expiring, banks identifying a set of potentially compromised numbers so it reissues a whole batch, the time I misplaced my wallet (while on a trip in the US, no less...) and had to get everything reissued (only to have my wallet reappear a couple weeks later), and my least favourite, banks canceling a line of cards.

In recent years, whenever I've activated a credit card everyone seems to be pushing a “Payment Protector” insurance plan, where, for a small premium, if injury or death prevents you from being able to pay your bill, they have you covered. I do not need such insurance. To be blunt, I think buying something on a credit card that you could not afford to pay for in cash at that moment is just plain stupid, aside from unavoidable and unplanned emergencies. I have no sympathy whatsoever for all these people who rack up credit card debt because of their own unwise spending habits. I personally would never be in a position where if I couldn't work due to an injury I wouldn't have the money to pay off my bill. I actually only use a credit card for the convenience and the provided rewards, not because I can buy whatever I want now and worry about paying for it later.

But these guys on the phone when I call to activate new cards are extremely pushy when it comes to this insurance. You can't simply tell them you're not interested, because then they ask why not, and act like they can't understand why you wouldn't want it. At times I had to rudely tell the person there is nothing he can say to get me to agree to it, and all I want is for him to activate my card and that's it. Sometimes, I need to say it multiple times. But the last time, with my current card, I just didn't have the patience to deal with it at the time, so I just agreed to let it be activated. The first month was free, after all, so that gave me time to call back later and cancel.

However, I was forgetting that one of my quirks is that I have a strong reluctance to phone people (even at work, I'll usually walk over to someone's desk even if they're upstairs, or just email them), particularly in cases like this, where I knew I'd have to deal with another worker drone who's programmed to say anything to get me to use the insurance. That, and I can be quite a procrastinator at times. I'd completely forget to call, until I saw the insurance premium on my monthly bill. But I never felt inspired to call them up at that moment, so the cycle continued.

After a few months of this, I realized that since the premium was a percentage of my account's balance at the time of the statement, if I paid off my balance (or more, so I had a credit instead) before then that premium would be zero. It's funny how that's something I've easily remembered to do every month, probably because it doesn't involve phoning anyone—just a few clicks at my bank's web site.

But one Saturday afternoon, I finally did try to call and cancel the insurance, only to find out that department was not open on weekends, and was only open while I was at work. And every weekday when I was taking my lunch break, I always had other things on my mind, like eating. So I kept on going in the same pattern of pre-paying my bills.

And then came this week. I've had the week off from work, and it occurred to me that I should remember to finally cancel the insurance at some point. Several days passed with me, as usual, forgetting until it would be too late to call them. I finally told myself it was something I had to do today. But then an interesting fact occurred to me. For the past half a year or more, I've had this Payment Protector insurance active on my card, but I haven't paid a single cent for it.

When I think about it, now it seems a little foolish to cancel it. I can pay nothing and get nothing, or pay nothing and get the potential benefits of the insurance, even if I'm certain I'll never use it. All I have to do is pay my bill a week or two earlier than I would have normally, which isn't an issue.

Or maybe it's just my telephonophobia searching for another excuse to not call them...