Citi, Catholic-style Parking, death of lightbulbs

Although one of my faithful blog readers has some issues with Citi, I wanted to share a personal story that I think is pretty neat. About 9 months ago, Citi offered me a service, should something catastrophic happen to me, I could put my payments on hold without accruing interest. Or something like that. I signed up for it because it was free for a month AND I could mail in a rebate to get $40 back. I mailed the rebate in and called to cancel my coverage before the 30 days was up. At that point, they told me I could opt for a lower level of coverage that would be really cheap AND I would be eligible for $30 in gift cards. The only catch was that the gift cards wouldn’t be sent if I wasn’t a member of this service. Knowing that I’d have to pay for a couple months of coverage to get my gift cards, I still calculated that I would come out pretty far ahead.

I had to mail in my request for the gift cards 3 times and I only received $20 worth, so I called Citi to cancel my protection and complain. I requested a refund for all the months of service since they hadn’t lived up to their end of the bargain, but I wasn’t really expecting to be fully refunded. They told me they would credit me for the previous month, and I thought that was acceptable. This week, I saw my most recent statement and they actually credited me every penny that I paid for the coverage over the 9 months. That was pretty nice of them. It’s so nice to get more than what you expect.

Parking Catholic-style – does this mean anything to you? My favorite morning DJ used that phrase and it cracked me up because I knew what it meant. It’s when you back into a parking space so that you can easily pull out of it when you leave. I had never heard that phrase used before on a phenomena I witness often...

Last week, after I got out of bed one morning, I turned on my dining room light and one of the bulbs on the chandelier went out. There was a pop and a flash and then it was dead. The light fixture and the bulbs are pretty new – I installed them both in July. But that’s not really that big of a deal. So then I went to the kitchen and turned on my recessed lighting and one of those bulbs went out too! Same thing – a pop and a flash and no light. I was kind of afraid that something was wrong with my electricity. Then this morning, the other light bulb in the recessed lighting in my kitchen suffered the same pop, flash, dead fate. But (knock on wood) my house hasn’t burned down. Yet.