Stick it on plastic
Beware the dangers of doing everything with a credit card. Every year thousands of people get badly into debt as a result of their plastic money (or their 'flexible friend' as one company put it). The reason is that it is so easy to buy something on-the-spot without needing to find out if you can pay for it. That is one of the reasons credit card companies like to get as many customers using one as possible. The worse they are at paying back money, the more profit the company or bank will make, as a result of interest.
One customer, however, had different ideas. Although this story has been around since the seventies, nobody is sure which bank or company was involved but it is believed to have happened in America. The customer applied for, and got, a brand new credit card. With his new freedom to purchase he immediately bought...nothing. The card sat in a drawer gathering dust (or maybe he only got it to scrape ice off his car windscreen on cold mornings). At the end of a month he received a bill for no dollars and no cents. Not surprisingly, he didn't pay it.
Now I'm sure you can see what's going to happen in this story.
I get a bill from a credit card company in Scotland every month. It tells me that I am a few pounds in credit (meaning I paid them too much money last time). They must have spent more money sending me these letters than they owe me but they don't seem to be complaining.
This man's card company had a different attitude. After a month they sent another bill, and a letter saying they still wanted payment. The next month the letter became more threatening. It said, 'We will cancel your credit card if you do not pay'. What could he do? Simple: He took out his cheque book, wrote a cheque for nought dollars nought, nought cents, and then sent it to them.
That should have been the end of the matter but then his bank telephoned him. Apparently nobody had ever tried to cash a cheque for nothing before. The credit card company had not even looked at it beforehand and tried to cash it just like any other. The bank's computer was not programmed to handle cheques with only zeroes on so it had crashed.
Oh dear. It might have been better for the man in our story to phone the card company and explain why he hadn't sent payment. Still, at least he wasn't getting any more threatening letters from them. Or at least, that was what he had hoped. A few days after the bank had experienced their computer problems, another letter arrived from the credit card people. They were most annoyed. His cheque had bounced.
Glossary
in debt w długach
flexible elastyczny
on-the-spot z miejsca
profit zysk
to purchase = to buy
to scrape oskrobać
a windscreen (windshield USA) przednia szyba
to complain złożyć
threatening groźny
cancel anulować
a cheque (check USA) czek
When a cheque bounces, the bank sends it back because they can't cash it (turn it into money).
Exercise
Match up the words with the definitions
- a cashier
- a loan
- a mortgage
- in the red
- a hole in the wall
- a branch
a) a cash machine
b) one of thousands of bank buildings where the customers go
c) when you have less than nothing in your bank account
d) someone who works behind the counter in a bank
e) money you borrow from a bank
f) money you borrow from a bank to buy something very expensive, such as a house
KEY
1d 2e 3f 4c 5a 6b
Did you know?
On the Pacific island of Yap, the islanders use the largest coins in the world. They are made of stone and are about three metres wide.
The text on a US Dollar used to say 'E Pluribus Unum', Latin for 'Out of Many, One'. It was changed to 'In God We Trust' in 1955 during the McCarthy presidency.
It took a year to design the pattern on the British five-pound note. When it was finished it was rejected because Queen Elizabeth's expression didn't look friendly enough. It took a year to design the next one.