The end of an era.

When I was a youth, recently out of college, my mom gave me some good advice. She said I ought to get a couple of "starter" credit cards to start building a credit history. 

Tell kids now that it was not typical for college students to have credit cards even a quarter century ago and watch the blank stares. 

Anyway, for my starter cards we went to the shopping centers, I applied for cards from those titans of retail, J.C. Penney and Sears. 

There were no fees for the store cards, and so I held on to them year after year, using them occasionally. I canceled the Sears card when, essentially, Sears got canceled. But I used the Penney's card at least a couple of times a year. You could get deals, and the clothes usually looked pretty good on me. "Pretty good" is the best I can hope for; the clothes can only make so much of the man after all. 

Periodically I would receive a new Penney's card, activate it, chop up the old one, and off we went. Year in, year out, literally for decades. I had that account before I met my wife. I had that account before I bought my first new car. I never lived more than 17 miles away from a J.C. Penney. It was always good to know that JCP was there for me. 

This past week I got a new Penney's card, as usual. This one looked a little different. Mastercard had gotten involved now. So I bothered to read all the paperwork that came with it. Hideous interest rates, minor fees for late payments, the usual stuff. And then I saw the thing that really irked me:

$1.99 fee for paper statements. 

Could that be right? I mean, they only sent me a statement when I had a balance, and when I had a balance I paid it. The vast majority of the mail I ever got from JCP was catalogs, coupons, and unsolicited advertising. My little mail statement was a tiny bit of postage for them. Were they really penalizing people who still want to write checks? People who grew up before 2000? People who, in other words, are the kind of folks who actually still like department stores? 

I called customer service, fighting through the computer phone tree every step of the way. When I got a live human being, whom I was determined not to take this out on, I asked politely: Are you really charging me two bucks to send me a bill? Yes indeedy. Well, please cancel my card immediately. 

She didn't even try to get me to stay. Just checked that there was no balance and closed the account on the spot. 

I don't know if old-fashioned department stores have a future in American retail. I do know that charging people to send them the bill is not a way to keep customers, though. I think we're going to see a lot more of this kind of thing ahead, because our retail companies, like most of our institutions, are run by dummies these days. 

Sorry, J.C. -- I was a steady customer for decades and you blew it. When you go the way of Sears, don't come crying to me.