Don’t let freebies fool you

by Jack Garigliano

Wednesday, April 9, 2008 00:00

My first days as a college student brought with them a crippling weakness for free pizza. I have since learned to keep my cravings in check, but for a time my addiction drove me, in desperation, to deeds I will never commit again. In particular, I still look back with horror on the day I whored my personal information to that most cancerous of evils, the credit card company.

A friend and I, our stomachs raging with hunger, were easily lured to a Domino’s Pizza by the siren call of a flyer promising free food. Suspecting some sort of catch, we discovered the conditions for obtaining this free pizza soon after our arrival: we had to order an inactivated credit card, which would charge us nothing unless we chose to activate and use it. Neither of us planned on using the card. Ultimately, we both filled out the order form, receiving for our troubles two slices of cheese pizza, which is the best thing in the world on an empty stomach. We were assured we would not get any junk mail or further solicitations for credit cards — just a blank credit card and two greasy slices of heaven.

Just as we suspected, it was all a big fat lie. Barely a week after I trashed the credit card I ordered, a deluge of unwanted letters swamped my mailbox, and a regular stream continued thereafter for the rest of the year. A friend who currently works at the dorm I lived in last year tells me I still get mail from credit card companies, which she promptly throws away.

These and other aggressive student-directed credit card marketing tactics are rightfully coming under public scrutiny. Traditionally, credit card companies inundate college towns with phone calls, letters, flyers and promises of free stuff. Most often, these tactics work; colleges are full of people eager to get in good favor with banks to get bigger loans in the future for nice things like cars and houses.

Saturated with young people sitting on the cusp of independence and neurotic about their financial future, college campuses are to credit card companies as fish in a barrel are to a loaded gun. Students, however, can easily fall prey to cards with soaring interest rates and predatory late fees, since many of them are unfamiliar with the system and might pick the easiest company to reach. Card companies can legally demand exorbitant fees at a moment’s notice for the smallest of reasons, and students can and often unwittingly do fall into the clutches of the more unscrupulous vendors, enticed by free food or the simple accessibility of obtaining a card in an over-marketed area.

One of WISPIRG’s latest campaigns, part of the national USPIRG’s Truth About Credit campaign, addresses these issues and proposes regulating credit card marketing on campus to make it more “fair.” However, the type of regulation they propose does not entirely address the problem, and a different type of regulation would be more beneficial. The campaign calls for preventing sharing student contact information lists to marketing companies, banning free gifts at campus credit card booths and increasing financial education. While efforts to impart deep financial lore to students are always worthwhile, there are better ways to protect students from bad credit than simply limiting the marketing.

Horrible credit deals will always exist, no matter how much one tries to limit their advertising. Short of having their right to free speech barred, credit card companies will always find ways to advertise these bad deals. And even though I think credit cards are vicious little bastards that wreak havoc on the unwary, there are legitimate reasons to own one, and not every card offer is a bad deal.

Thus, these advertisements and marketing techniques must be regulated the same way the Surgeon General regulates cigarette ads: simply warn the viewer about hazardous effects to your health. Every credit card advertisement or solicitation should be explicitly marked with every type of fee directly associated with it (several states already have rules like these to various degrees). Also, ads for cards that, for instance, charge above a set interest rate or have ephemeral definitions of good or bad standing, should carry an appropriate warning label.

Hopefully, combined with additional efforts toward financial awareness, these kinds of regulations would curb the effects of marketing bad deals. In the meantime, those willing to get rocked by a spam tornado can look forward to more important things in life — like free pizza.

Jack Garigliano (garigliano@wisc.edu) is a sophomore majoring in history and English.