August 6, 2010 Archives

Susie Supalo's six-year quest for Super Bowl tickets came to a joyous end Friday.

Supalo was one of thousands of Bank of America credit cardholders who were stunned by the banking giant's announcement in July that after August 31, 2010, the reward points they'd earned on their officially licensed NFL credit cards would expire. After the announcement, I wrote a blog on the topic, which prompted this comment from Supalo a few weeks later:

"I have been saving NFL points for 6 years for Super Bowl tickets. I had enough points last Super Bowl for upper level seats but decided not to redeem them because I had been saving for so long I thought I would wait for lower level seats. I have enough points for lower level seats and now I can't redeem them. Obtaining Super Bowl tickets with my points has been my goal for 6 years. I think BofA and NFL should have given us more notice. I would have redeemed my points last Super Bowl. Is there anything I can do? I feel cheated by the NFL, B of A and the Chicago Bears! How can they get away with this???"

This debit card overdraft problem is eerily reminiscent of the subprime mortgage fiasco, which nearly imploded the U.S. economy in 2008. Mortgage lenders made unsuitable loans to low-income families knowing full well they didn't have the means to make the payments.

Unfortunately, there was a financial incentive for everyone along the mortgage lending pipeline to continue to issue subprime loans.

Now, with debit cards, there is a financial incentive for banks and credit unions to sign a certain segment of debit card users up for overdraft protection services -- so that the lenders don't lose a large source of revenue.

The more customers screw up their accounts, the more overdraft revenue a bank collects. All sorts of alarms should be going off here.