wrighters.net

I received a new credit card and ATM card in the last few weeks as my old ones had expired.  In the past, when I needed to activate them I was able to just do this via an IVR (Interactive Voice Response) system in about 15 seconds.  Done and done!  This time, for the credit card I was connected with a live person who proceeded to tell me all about a credit monitoring service that I should use.  I managed to talk my way out of that one, but for the ATM card I was forced to listen to an automated message for the same service.  It must have droned on for about a full minute, and then when I didn’t press “1″ to buy the service, it said something to the effect of “while you are waiting for us to activate your card, don’t miss this great opportunity, blah, blah”.  Do they really think we don’t know how long it takes to activate a card?  I guess they have to make up their billions of losses somewhere…