My 12-year-old son informed me that he wants a credit card. Now, there’s a recipe for disaster.

“You don’t even qualify for a credit card,” I told him. “And be happy that you don’t because once you’re entangled in the quagmire of credit, you might as well just kiss any home equity you think you have good-bye.” “I understood about three words in that sentence.” He replied, while rifling through my purse looking for spare change.

“Let me explain it to you with a little story,” I said.

Once upon a time, after I had finally paid off all my college loans, I was bombarded by solicitations from banks and lending institutions urging me to “join the millions of Americans who have found the good life, by signing and returning the enclosed pre-approved credit card application.” Suddenly every bank from New York to Japan was dying to give me a VISA or a MasterCard.

Not wanting to offend any sensitive credit departments, I immediately mailed away for all of my newfound plastic happiness. The credit cards came rolling in, along with high interest payments. Within two years, I was the proud owner of no less than three Visa cards, two Mastercards, an American Express Gold card, a Diner’s Club card, about $400 in yearly account fees, and debt up to my more-frequently twitching eyeballs.

After the novelty of credit wore off and the reality of high monthly payments sunk in, I knew that I had to purge most of my credit accounts. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that by doing so I would be forced to participate in an exhausting exchange of phone calls, letters, telexes and faxes, all involving more red tape than even IRS could handle.

To cancel my unwanted accounts, I sent each bank where I had a credit card a letter informing them that I wished to close the account, accompanied by the bank’s credit card, cut in two. Exactly one out of the five banks I contacted responded by canceling my account. Three banks sent me computer-generated complaint forms to fill out, and one had the nerve to reply with a bill for the $35 annual fee.

Eager to know why they wanted money to cancel my account, I called the latter bank first. After spending a full five minutes explaining the situation to a sympathetic customer service representative, I expected to hear something like, “We’re sorry for the inconvenience. I’ll take care of it right away.” Instead, she asked, “Can I have your NIN, please?”

“My what?”

“Your NIN. We sent it to you along with your PIN.” “You sent me a NIN and a PIN? I thought you sent me a credit card.” I was beginning to wonder if I had accidentally dialed the area code of another planet.

“You were sent a NIN and a PIN under separate cover,” she said impatiently. “Your NIN is the node identification name that your account uses to communicate with our host computer in our head office, and your PIN is your personal identification number that you use at automatic tellers.” She might as well have added, “You twit!” given her tone of voice.

“I don’t have those numbers! I never had those numbers!” I cried, with just a touch of panic in my voice. There was a long silence after that. Suddenly, without my NIN and my PIN I felt totally useless. I could picture this woman shaking her head, and rolling her eyes. I was sure she’d have a good laugh with her husband when she went home that evening.

“Honey, you’ll never guess what happened to me today. A customer called needing help, and she didn’t even know her NIN or her PIN. Can you believe it? And she wanted me to help her! What nerve!”

“Golly, Madge, did she even know her account number?”

“Well, yes, but anyone could get that.”

The impatient voice on the other end of the telephone interrupted my train of thought. “Look ma’am, you’ll have to contact our corporate office to cancel your account. I can’t do it without your NIN. That phone number at corporate is…

“ After speaking with four more equally pleasant customer service individuals over the course of a week, I discovered that my NIN was a 10-character, alpha-numeric sequence that resembled the zip code of a medium-sized, foreign country, and my PIN was an eight-digit number that I found, after close examination, spelled out the words “poop head” when dialed on a touch-tone phone. (When I pointed this out to the customer service manager, she assured me that it was just an unusual coincidence. Right. I bet.)

Once I was able to give my NIN and my PIN to anyone who requested it, I was confident that my account had been canceled. However, when I got a form letter from the bank two days later that read: “Your current cards will be expiring in 30 days. For your convenience, here are your new cards,” I was paranoid that I had been assigned a new NIN and PIN, and that I would have to go through the previous week’s agony all over again.

I didn’t waste any time. Immediately, I cut up the new cards and sent them back, along with a colorful letter suggesting new and creative uses for unwanted credit cards. Then to follow up, I called the bank. I was going to go straight to the top this time.

“Hello,” I barked into the phone. “Let me speak to the PIN head. Er, excuse me. I mean the head of the PIN department. No wait… I mean the manager of the PIN department… Actually, I mean… “ Instantly I was connected to the usual “muzak” one hears while on hold. Then a woman’s voice came on the line.

“Node identification names. May I help you?”

“What?! You’re,… you’re NINs! I asked for PINs! This is just great! Don’t you people know your PINs from your NINs?!” This conversation did not go the way I had practiced it in the mirror. Instead of sounding tough and intimidating, I sounded, even to myself, hysterical and ready for a fitting in a little white jacket with very long arms.

Fortunately, the lady in NINs was not the usual ninny that I had become accustomed to speaking with throughout this ordeal. She explained that the bank had a number of departmental computers. To close an account, the cancellation had to be entered in all of the computers via the customer’s NIN, and verified with the corresponding PIN. Now that she had the information pertaining to my problem, she promised that she would find my NIN and PIN, and personally delete my account from the their system.

As she spoke, I could feel my blood pressure coming down. At last, I would be free from this bank and their greedy computers.

Weeks went by. No word from the bank. However, I knew that my cancellation confirmation would come eventually. I had made too much of a fuss to be ignored again. After all I’d been through, they’d have to send me something.

Finally, something did come in the mail from the bank. As I tore open the envelope with the bank’s logo in the upper left-hand corner, I felt a great sense of victory. These were my emancipation papers, as well as my proof that, in the end, the human element always wins out over computers. Because, despite NINs and PINs, computers by themselves are basically stupid, and can do nothing more than what they are programmed to do.

Unfortunately, at the time, I didn’t get a chance to read the entire letter and savor the moment. In fact, I didn’t get beyond the first sentence. I felt light-headed and fainted when I read, “Dear Valued Customer: Thank you for reporting your lost or stolen cards…”

I looked around. My son was gone. At some point in the story between “poop head” and “pin head” he decided having a credit card wasn’t worth it if it meant having to listen to me babble on about life experiences. Sometimes there are advantages to being a boring adult in your child’s eyes.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Arts & Culture, Entertainment, Humor, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.