Not this Gap [edgeplot / Flickr]
Several days left now. I, having completely run out of money at the end of the year, am printing out high-quality digital pictures and framing them for family members, none of whom, luckily, read this blog.
You, however, may still be buying things at the mall, and you may be tempted to pay for them with the ten-percent-off-initial-purchase store credit, the kind you get right there at the counter. As you probably suspected, this is a very bad deal for you. The casino always wins.
So discovered Chris, after charging a shirt to a Gap card last year. What follows is his last correspondence with the Gap. We offer it as a cautionary tale to you, the shopper.
GapCard Inquiries
PO Box 981064
El Paso, TX 79998-1064
Please be so kind as to cancel my Gap credit card immediately and cancel this so-called “new balance??? of so-called “finance??? and “late??? fees.
You have all the records on my Gap custom in your computer.
The short of the story is this: I bought a $20 shirt at Gap in Harvard Square, Cambridge a year ago. After my own inadvertent neglect of your first bills, I paid $33.82 to square the debt last May.
I know no shop keeper—in truth I know no loanshark—who would not be satisfied with that 70 percent penalty payment on a six-month wait.
The extra charges on your bill would add another $116 on top of the $34 already paid, for a total of $150. That comes to 7 and a half times the value of what I bought in November and paid for in May. It comes to a 650 percent per annum penalty for shopping with Gap credit.
On its face, as you must recognize, this is usury approaching madness.
To no satisfaction I have spent several hours now discussing this bill with Gap clerks at the store in Cambridge and on the phone in India and in Canton, Ohio.
The next move is yours. Please decide (1) whether you are a clothing store or a billing machine; and (2) whether you wish to see me henceforth as a customer or an adversary.
Please cancel this bill entirely.
Yours sincerely,
Christopher Lydon
They canceled the bill.
