So today, I called and cancelled my Capital One Platinum card. Why? Because we don’t use it and they are charging me $5 a month for a card that hasn’t had a balance in years.

Screw them. So this is how it went down.

I gave them a chance to save me as a customer, but nope, they didn’t want me. My wife has a Capital One card with no monthly fee. I have no idea why mine does and hers doesn’t, but that’s the way it is. Honestly, we don’t use credit cards. We are 100% debt-free. No credit cards have a balance and everything else is paid off. If we buy anything, we just pay cash.

So I call this morning, thinking they might be reasonable and want to keep me around. I might want to use it someday, after all. For some big purchases, we will occasionally and then pay it off in full at the end of the month.

Of course, that’s not the kind of customer that we want. They want people who are going to drive themselves into debt and be paying off high interest balances for years on end. Sorry, that’s not me. If I go to Lowes and use the card because I get a 5% discount, it gets paid off at the end of the month. If I use the gas card, because I get a discount on purchases without having to go inside or worry about carrying cash, it gets paid off at the end of the month. I’m happy to carry that card around in my wallet, I’ve got a couple of others that have been likewise empty for a long time. Having it in case you need it, although it’s hard to imagine ever needing it, should be fine, right?

Nope, they were only too happy to cancel it, which is fine with me. They were actually kind of rude about it. Granted, it was some lady in a call center in India, she isn’t paid to care or perform any kind of customer service and she certainly doesn’t care about keeping customers for Capital One. She read this long thing to me, which I could hardly understand anyhow, and kept asking if I was sure.

Absolutely. I’m not going to pay you for the convenience of carrying a piece of plastic in my wallet. Then, it was gone. No big deal. My wife and I both have over 800 credit scores and a ton of available credit anyhow. Whatever was on there was just a drop in the bucket anyhow. I’m sure we’ll survive. We’ll just survive with an extra $60 a year in our account.

I’m really starting to appreciate just how far I fall outside of the norm and how wonderful it is.