Rocky G. Fraud

 

by Pa Rock

American Consumer

I live at what must be a very critical location on the rural roads, deer trails, and dog paths that crisscross the Ozarks of southern Missouri.  My house is almost the very first one serviced by the trash man on Monday mornings, a fact which guarantees that I begin each workweek lugging bags of trash out to the edge of the road in the dark.  But the trash man runs the hills and hollers in a different pattern than the mail lady, who gets to my house near the end of her work day - which means that I am often walking out to the mail box in the dark to check and see if the mail has finally arrived.  Even without any livestock, catching a few extra winks of sleep has its challenges at Rock's Roost.

But the mail came early yesterday - or perhaps the assortment of envelopes that I pulled from the mailbox in the afternoon was delivered late the previous night and I had just forgotten to trudge outside in the cold and dark to retrieve them.  Anyway, it was nice to find mail in the mailbox during daylight hours.

  

I sorted through the five or six items on the way back to the house and was not surprised to find that all but one were "begs"from politicians and charities, a papered supplement to the hundreds of "begs" that were flooding my email inbox at the same time due to the fact that it was "Bloodsucking Tuesday" or some other clever follow-up to "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday."  It was a long walk from my mailbox out by the road to the trashcan in my kitchen, but I pushed on knowing that I would get there eventually.

The one item that did not appear to be a beg, or at least a common beg, was from my credit card company.   The window on the front of the envelope revealed that the material enclosed was for a person at my home address, but that person was identified as "Rocky G. Fraud."  I knew as I entered the house that instead of ripping up this particular piece of junk mail and depositing it in the trash unread, as I generally do with the majority of correspondence that I receive, that I would instead be reading the one addressed to "Rocky G. Fraud," which was more than likely just a clever ruse to get me to open their advertisement anyway.

My credit card company probably doesn't like me.  I pay for as many purchases as I can each month with a credit card.  (Some vendors now charge a fee if a buyer wishes to use a credit card, but I don't succumb to extortion.)  My credit card company doesn't charge a fee and expects to make more than its share of obscene profits off of the sky-high interest that it charges on monthly balances.  But I dutifully pay my complete balance every month and therefore operate my card essentially free.  Then at the end of every year I cash in my rewards points and bank that.  Merry Christmas!

Maybe, to their way of thinking, I am a fraudster - using their service to make money!

The unmitigated gall of that hillbilly crook!

So I opened the envelope from my credit card company yesterday, the one addressed to "Rocky G. Fraud," and found that it was an advertisement for a "fixed-rate personal loan."  

I don't know whether to feel insulted or not, but one thing I do know is that I don't need their loan.  I will be charging my Christmas gifts this year, and then paying the bill with the credit card company's own money - just as I have done for years.

Happy holidays from Rocky G. Fraud and the good people who "give" him credit and then pay him to take it!