Discover has been running an ad campaign recently that shows people calling their credit card company with an issue, and then they talk to themselves on the phone, and the issue is resolved easily, because I suppose most people would treat themselves pretty well and be understanding with themselves about stuff. But what about people who hate themselves? And what about people who are sadistic and/or masochistic? And what about people who are self-abusive? And what about people who know they’re dishonest criminal types, and are ashamed of this? And what about self-destructive people? How would they treat themselves in this type of situation?
Surely a scam artist or thief would know not to give themselves extra leeway on suspicious stuff, right? And self-loathing people might intentionally treat themselves extra harshly, thinking they deserve it. And self-destructive people might intentionally destroy their own credit and get themselves in trouble for fraud and such. Is that what Discover would do to people like this? And if so, how would they know who to do it to? Maybe they’d better just let us have absolute control over all of our credit stuff just in case they’d get it wrong, you know, like on an honor system or something. Because after all, wouldn’t most people trust themselves anyway? (I suppose they could say they don’t think people trust themselves that much, and so neither do they.)
Surely a scam artist or thief would know not to give themselves extra leeway on suspicious stuff, right? And self-loathing people might intentionally treat themselves extra harshly, thinking they deserve it. And self-destructive people might intentionally destroy their own credit and get themselves in trouble for fraud and such. Is that what Discover would do to people like this? And if so, how would they know who to do it to? Maybe they’d better just let us have absolute control over all of our credit stuff just in case they’d get it wrong, you know, like on an honor system or something. Because after all, wouldn’t most people trust themselves anyway? (I suppose they could say they don’t think people trust themselves that much, and so neither do they.)
Or, you know, maybe criminals would give themselves unlimited credit and then just delete their own account so that they could just get everything for free and leave no paper trail, and with an evil twin working on the inside of the credit card company, maybe they could keep giving themselves more and more credit cards under different names and keep this scam going on indefinitely. So, would Discover treat a criminal like that? If not, maybe a criminal could sue them for false advertising because they won’t help them perpetrate fraud like they would do for themselves?
But wouldn’t it be fun to have one of these ads have someone asking for a higher credit limit, and have themselves on the other end of the phone say something like: “What, and have you blow it all on coke like you did last time? No way, man!” Or: “With the way you always run the credit up to the max and then make your parents pay it off? No way: not again!” (Maybe for younger cardholders, the ads could have their parents answer the customer service calls, since they’re the ones who will most likely get stuck with the bill anyway.)
Here are some examples of this ad campaign:
