online purchases
elizabeth / 14.08.2021

The Man Giveth and the Man Taketh

I opened today's email and found three notices of changes to benefits for various services and accounts that I have. One of them was from a MasterCard that I use quite frequently for online purchases. Probably like you, I usually just click my delete icon without bothering to pay attention to the change. I mean, I can’t do anything about it anyway. Right? But because I’ve received so many notifications of changes recently, I decided to actually open the email and read what changes are taking place.

 

This particular MasterCard has notified me that three of their benefits for card users, purchase insurance, master rental waiver and worldwide automatic travel accident insurance, baggage delay insurance, and trip cancellation interrupted insurance will no longer be available as of a certain date. No big deal, right? Not necessarily.

 

Now in and of itself this notification may not seem too bad because I haven't rented a vehicle recently nor have I done any traveling over the last year-and-a-half. But when I did travel a lot, I counted on these insurances in the event of an emergency. I actually used this benefit once when I went to conference in Orlando, but my luggage went to Miami. The conference was over by the time my luggage caught up with me, so it was nice to have this small baggage delay insurance benefit to help cover the costs of the things I had to purchase in order to get through the conference.

 

The loss of the purchase insurance benefit is the one that really scares me. Probably like you, I've made increasing numbers of online purchases since the Pandemic lockdowns started. I used this particular MasterCard with the confidence that if there was ever a problem with a purchase, I would be able to get a refund and have the problem made whole.

 

So why are these seemingly free benefits no longer going to be available? The answer is because they're not free! The company that provides the insurance protection to MasterCard for these benefits charges for them. The costs have increased so much since the Pandemic started in early 2020 that it is no longer cost effective for this particular MasterCard to offer them to their customers.

 

Is this particular blog post of interest and helpful to you? We hope so.

Over the next several weeks, we’re going to be posting blogs and videos examining rising prices, declining services, and other changes that are making it increasingly difficult to get ahead financially. We’ll also be showing you ways in which you can find resources that will help you stop losing ground and return to moving forward.