Walmart's Balance Protection Plan is a predatory, unfathomable mess

[tinoesroho]

I recieved a call today from Walmart’s hounddogs, pitching the Walmart Balance Protection Plan - WBPP for short.

“Great monthly rate of 95cents on months where your balance is 25 dollars or more.” they said.

95 cents, per 100 dollars. 95 cents, per 100 dollars comes out to a whopping fourteen bucks every month, on each month. I know this, because I read Walmart’s website - not because they told me on the call.

Protect Your Card and Purchases
Balance Protection Plan

The Balance Protection Plan can cover your payments when you can’t make them.

This optional insurance plan can pay 5% of your account balance if you:

Lose your job, through no fault of your own (excluding self-employed individuals)
Become disabled
Are hospitalized

Or you or your spouse who is an authorized user’s entire balance in case of:

Critical illness (cancer, heart attack, stroke)
Terminal Illness
Death 

Prior to July 1, 2015 premium is calculated at the rate of $0.85* per $100 of your statement balance and effective July 1, 2015 will be calculated at the rate of $0.95* per $100 of your monthly statement balance (plus applicable taxes), in any month with a balance of $25 or more at the time the statement prints. This means you only pay for the coverage you need.

5% of my balance comes to about 74 dollars, in the event of a layoff or hospitalization - or roughly, over five months worth of fees. Let’s be real, 99% of people “protected” by this plan will never make use of that - and the ones that do, the company will find a way to screw over.

Needless to say, I’m cancelling effective immediately.

Shame on you, Walmart.

(Capitalism means squeezing every last penny, even if it takes two weeks of calling every shift.)

[infundibulum]

I have a Discover card, and was offered something like this called Payment Protection. But the card allows me to put payments on hold if I’m in hardship. So effectively, they wanted me to pay $20 a month for something that I didn’t need. It took a long time to figure it out, too. The promotional materials emphasized theft of card and identity theft a lot, which made it seem like identity-theft related coverage, which it wasn’t.

[tinoesroho]

no benefit payable for loss of employment that occurs within 90 days of effective date of coverage
or if you were not employed by the same employer for 6 consecutive months prior to loss of employment

no benefit from voluntary resignation; pregnancy; dismissal with cause; normal seasonal unemployment; retirement; strike; lockout
self-inflicted injuries; attempted suicide; commission of a criminal offense

gee, it covers pretty much nothing at all

[DaakSyde]

First thing that catches my eye is the capitalized U in “satisfactory to Us”. Although to be fair, they do also capitalize You and various other random words as if a confused chimpanzee were flailing at the shift key while they were typing.

[Voynaimor]

It’s meant to look legal. In legal documents for convenience they often define capitalised words for the parties, e.g “unscrupulous gang of rogues (Us)”

[Purplecat]

It looks like lessons don’t transfer across the Atlantic.

How the PPI scandal unfolded

This looks exactly like all the shady nonsense over here that has taken a decade to redress.

[gatto]

this used to, i think, be covered under usury. then we did away with those laws - because progress. and now, companies can change you whatever they want - because freedom.

that stores can offer anything other than layaway still rocks my world.

soon i guess we will be leasing companies our phone and laptop time for bitcoin mining in exchange. and we won’t be able to use our own internet connection because we’ll have sold off too much of the bandwidth to finance our daily life.

stay away from “credit”. that’s the only advice i can think of.