BJ's apples to apples

It was pointed out to me that the comparison I did on BJ's rewards and Fidelity's rewards was not apples to apples. BJ's is a membership upgrade and Fidelity's is a credit card.



If the writer is correct, you can upgrade to a BJ's rewards membership and pay with Fidelity's AmEx card - effectively doubling down on savings.

The earlier reason for BJ's hitting the Company Acting Badly list holds - don't market me at $35 feature that will save me $24.21 a year. And... if you want real savings, apply for a Fidelity card or a similar one from another company.

BJ's fine print

As I received another email from BJ's asking me to spend $35 a year to save $24.21 (click here for earlier post), I thought it would be worth checking out the fine print and conditions on BJ's rewards membership and comparing it to a Fidelity Rewards AmEx card I'm considering getting.

BJ's has a fee. Fidelity doesn't.
BJ's has a cap. Fidelity doesn't.
BJ's rewards expire. Fidelity's don't.

I've put a quick comparison chart together.

BJ's remains a Company Acting Badly for marketing me a rewards card that will lose me money each year and is not competitive across a range of features.

Chase SSN Loss Pattern?

A quick Google search of Patricia O. (O My God I've Lost Customer's Social Security Numbers) Baker came up with a similar situation to my recent SSN loss.

Click here to read the notice at Datalossdb.

Seems Chase notified the state of New York in late 2006 that a tape with customer's SSN could not be found at a vendor's off-site facility. Want to bet it's the same vendor as my loss? Want to bet that Chase didn't change any policy from 2006 to 2009?

Of interest in the 2006 notification, Chase offered $10,000 in identity theft protection to each victim. Unfortunately for the 34,266 New York residents affected, the footnote to the letter to the NY state attorney general says that the theft protection is not available to NY residents.

Chase'ing My SSN Away

When comparing Citi and JPMorganChase (Chase bank), it's not hard to see how Chase is doing better. Citi's in the hole for $45 billion of taxpayer money and Chase returned the TARP funds it never wanted in the first place. Citi's got a revolving management team and board while Jamie Dimon has led Chase for five years. Their stock tells the story as Chase (JPM) is up 17% over roughly five years since Dimon joined and Citi is down 91%. Click here for an interactive chart.

Unfortunately, my belief in Chase's attention to detail and looking out for its customers was smacked by this letter I received yesterday. In short, Chase backs up its customer information on a tape and uses a vendor to store that tape. Chase's vendor can't find the tape that includes my name, address and social security number (SSN).

Click on pages to view the letter.

While Chase might be correct that the tape can "be read only with special equipment and software", let's not kid ourselves that this is rocket science. The larger question is why Chase's data wasn't encrypted so that even if it was able to be read (which it can be) that the data would be useless without the key to un-encrypt the data.

It's not even six weeks since I was Schwab'd by Chuck who's team also lost my SSN and personal information. Like Schwab, Chase is offering to monitor my identity with an Experian product. That's standard. Their offering to monitor it with their own branded product (Chase Identity Protection) that they hope I will like and will pay for in the future. That's Priceless. Leave it to Chase to turn an internal control and process f-up into a marketing and revenue opportunity.

Chase's letter is signed by Patricia O. Baker. That's 'O' as in O' My God, I just lost customer Social Security Numbers.

Perhaps now's the time to short Chase's stock as they've once again made the Companies Acting Badly list, this time by losing my Social Security Number and ID information. Or perhaps it's time for Chase to get a new CIO who can enforce protocols with a data storage vendor. Or perhaps it's time for Chase to get a new data storage vendor. Who's in charge of this at Chase?

JPMorganChase joins Charles Schwab, IBM, Intuit and BNY Mellon as Companies Acting Badly for managing to lose my social security number and other personal information.

Math at BJ's

It's not often I get an email from a company telling me about a promotion that will cost me more than I can save from their promotion.

BJ's is a Company Acting Badly for either:

• thinking its customers can't do basic math, or
• thinking it can trick its customers into signing up for a rewards card that will lose them money, or
• not having someone in their marketing department who understands how to set up an email campaign

Why should someone spend $35 per year (likely charged in advance) to get rebates on purchases (likely seen monthly) that will amount to $24.21?

Good shopping, decent selection, good prices, but poor marketing puts BJ's on the Companies Acting Badly list.