J_R

From the AMA website:

AMA Launches Partnership With US Bank

AMA has a new partner in our Affinity Bank card offering. This program offers members the opportunity to support the sport and AMA, and to put money in their pockets at the same time.

We will mail information to members about this exciting new venture in the next several days. If you're interested in applying for a card, mail in the application you will receive or click on the US Bank link on the front page of the AMA Web site.

A portion of the revenue generated by this offer will be used to support a wide range of AMA programs. Non-dues-revenue programs such as this one help AMA keep its dues lower.

Montague

As long as they don't send us all credit cards in the mail and then ask us to send them a check if we like it, I don't care who they partner with.

Now, if they then turn around and give out personal information to their "partners", I'll be pissed.

Personal information here is anything indiciating I exist. I don't want postal or eletronic spam targeting me because I fly model airplanes. I don't want that put in some data warehouse of some company along with any other info they can manage to collect about me. It's annoying, and I hope the AMA doesn't go down that road.

p.s. I watched the video. OMG! that thing SUCKED SO BAD. I couldn't believe it. They want $9 for that garbage? Not a chance. And no info on how much the future ones cost either.

abel_pranger

Kirk-
You reflected my own sentiments better than I could. RE the data warehouse, it's much more than annoying. I got a letter just yesterday from Bank of America, informing me that "a small number of computer back-up tapes were lost in shipment and identified as missing in late December <but we didn't get around to informing customers until March...>. The tapes in question contained customer and account information for some GSA SmartPay government charge cardholders."

Identity theft can spoil you whole day.

Abel

vicman

My Feedback: (10)

I got one of these last year.[&o] I did like the vid tho and even sent in my nine bucks.

scrcc_guy

Well, so much for privacy. I kinda remember checking off the "no stink'in unsolicited mail, thank you very much" box. I guess everyone's info is now fair game in the quest for bigger and better revenues.

P.

necorc

Abel... are you sure you weren't being "Phished" ? Or was it a standard snail mail letter?

abel_pranger

Dennis-
Standard snail mail letter, company letterhead that I recognize.

What tends to irk the crap out of me is that they know they've set up this kind of scenario, and it's because they don't give a tinker's damn about protecting your privacy, despite the $$$ they've spent on Mad Ave spin artists to tell you otherwise. How many of us use mag tape to back up data files on our PCs in the 21st century? Why isn't the data 100% absolutely, positively nuke-proof encrypted? The encryption algorithms are readily available in the public domain, for free. There is no possible excuse for this kind of thing to happen. It happens because they really don't give a flying fig about your privacy. As a SysEng, I built systems during the late 1960's to move more money than most people can comprehend via wire between Fed Reserve repositories and regional banks. They have never been penetrated. That system dates to when main-frame computers had 4X5" PWBs to implement a couple of inverters that could be configured to function as flip-flops and logical operands like OR gates. The shysters peddling credit cards are the 2nd lowest form of life on the planet, right behind lawyers.

There now, I feel better after loosing that rant. Thanks.

Abel

Hossfly

Yep, saw that one earlier in the day. Kind of a "talking-down" to the membership with such a statement. My bet is that the bureaucracy will eat twice any profits.

I have little doubt that there are a number of persons that would be happy to have an AMA associated Credit Card (CC), yet in these times, the competition is so fierce out there in the CC business that so many reward the card-holder with so many advantages that I find it unlikely that any significant number of people will go for it.

I make most of my purchases with one of two CCs. My AOL associated card pays my AOL bill. I did a significant remodeling job on the kitchen last year. I have the next 2 years AOL service free in the bank. (BTW I carry NO balances forward each month: everything gets paid when the bill arrives.) Discover card rebates 5% of fuel purchases. That is now about 10 cents per gallon less than pump prices, given $2 per gal. is the area price now. That is significant for one that wants to go to the field a few times a month. Others get big points for travel and such. My NRA CC goes unused except for rare purchases where I am uncertain about the circumstances.

So when people P & M so much about the dues, I don't think they will be adequately fond of giving all the CC perks to AMA rather than to themselves. For example, wife and I drive about 25,000 miles per year. At a 10 cents per gal. rebate that is $125.00 per year. AMA dues would have to significantly increase to off-set that. If AMA should increase significantly, the off-set would be those other CC rebates for the member. Even for a "lifer" like me, I rather have the $$ in MY pocket. As P.J.O'Rourke said, "Giving money to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teen-agers." Methinks 'bout same for AMA.

So, while the AMA may feel so good and toast themselves with bubbly for their great service, this ol' Hoss thinks that the economics of the times will not be overly supportive of such schemes. Hopefully I am wrong.[:-]

Matt Kirsch

My Feedback: (21)

Too late. If we're getting applications, they've got your names and addresses. Who do you think is sending out the applicaitons, the AMA, on their dollar? Nuh-uh.

You people have short memories. This isn't the first time the AMA has "partnered" with a bank to offer a credit card to its members. Think back about four years ago. Check groups.google.com: "AMA Visa: It's everywhere you want it to be?"

If this bank didn't already have our personal information, it's not much of a bank, and doomed to bankruptcy in the near future. I know they had mine, as I constantly get credit card offers in the mail from them.

There's no such thing as privacy any more. Our information is out there; it was out there long before the AMA ever thought about giving it out. There's no undoing that unless you change your name and move, but it won't be long before your new identity is in every corporate database in the country again.

The upside is that these companies are so greedy, so information-hungry that their databases are going to reach critical mass. There will be so much information, that it will become completely useless, unprocessable. I don't think we're far from that. Every variation of name or address is a new record in the database; there are probably a dozen different "Horrace Cain" records all pointing to the same person (i.e. H Cain, Harrace Cain, Horrace Kain, Horrace Kane), for example. Just using you as an example Horrace, hope you don't mind.

Again, you complain about how the AMA should operate more like a "real business," pursue more "tangible" benefits for its members, seek out alternative sources of revenue. Here the AMA is doing all three.

J_R

This will work for a substantial number of you. If you think you are invisible, go to google and in the search box, insert your phone number, or that of a friend. Use the format 555-555-5555 . Many of you will find yourself listed, along with your address and a map of the location.

scottrc

MONEY IN WHO'S POCKETS???????????????????? This partnership? What exactly does it entail? The bank pays AMA a royalty for obtaining our names? Then we get more junklmail and useless offers for high interest loans and high fees for services.

Been there, done it, don't want to go through it agian.

Well, another checkmark on the list of reason why NOT to renew this year. Yes its March and I'm still trying to come up with viable reasons to part with $58.

Makes me feel even less personal with the AMA.

Scott

abel_pranger

JR-
You know it won't work for me. You know where I live, and you know my phone number, who I work for and the nature of my work. Only a handful of people in this forum have such information about me, and they are trusted to keep it under their hats. You won't find via a google search where USPS drops my mail, my phone number or the ISP that I interface with directly.

Abel

scottrc

Won't work if the phone number is un-listed either.

J_R

Not entirely true, as I am sure some have already found. The information supplied may be less, but, in some cases, there is still more information than most realized was out there.

Montague

Yeah, google accesses a reverse-lookup directory. Old hat, and nothing you can't get out of the phone book. And you can unlist your number, drop landline service, or take any number of steps to defeat it. Heck, the easy thing to do is just get your number listed with just a first initial and a city, but no street info. Been there, done that, fixed it years ago. But I'm actually not terribly protective of my phone number, and my address is findable.

I'm generally more concerned with data such as financial history, SSN, and anything that can make me appear to a worthwhile target, or give out info that could be used to perform ID theft. I honestly don't know what kind of info AMA gave to the CC company. If it was just name and address, well, it's annoying, but not the end of the world. What the CC company does with the info matters more. If they do one of those mailings with nice pre-approved form included that anyone can just send in and get a card, or worse yet, actually send a card (remember when CC companies did that all the time?), that would be worse. I gotta say, the postal mail at my place is horrible. I'm always trading mail with my neighbors and getting stuff late that went via who-knows-where. I live in a townhouse, so it's not surprising, really.

Communal garbage as well. So all CC applications or anything like that that I recieve go through the cross-cut shreader. You have a good shreader right?

Anyway, yes, the data is out there. But the less you can keep out there the better. The harder the theif has to work, the better.

It's a lot like the bear and running shoes story. You don't have to be perfect. You just have to make sure you're better than the next guy. A lot like protecting your house from theives. Any house can be broken in to. But if your neighbor's house is easier than yours, it's a good thing. And if your neighborhood is harder than the next neighborhood over, so much the better.

Having AMA spewing out my info more than necessary makes them a less favorable neighborhood, IMHO.

Matt Kirsch

My Feedback: (21)

They're not sending out unsolicited cards. Credit card companies haven't done that since the '80s. Too much risk. Even if they did... FREE EPOXY SPREADER! Card's no good if you don't activate it, and after 30 days, the card's no good even if you tried to activate it. If you're really paranoid, cut it in half and... TWO FREE EPOXY SPREADERS with no risk of someone breaking into your home, stealing the card, and activating it.

As Montague says, it's all about making yourself an undesirable target, not about absolute protection. Let 'em give out my name and address; anybody can get that with ease. I don't mind junk mail, as I didn't pay to receive it, and it gives me the warm fuzzies that I'm doing my part to save the environment when I toss it in the recycle bin.

Montague

(btw, my wife actually gets the mail and runs the shreader at my house, so I honestly wouldn't have a clue if a dozen new, unasked-for cards showed up in the mail on a daily basis, she'd have them cut up, shreaded, mangled, mutilated, and otherwise disposed of before I even knew they existed ). She's more paranoid than I am, which helps make my life easy

Btw, even an application for a card can be a problem if it falls in to the wrong hands. I have seen some applications that came pre-filled out. They just needed a signature, if I recall. My wife pointed them out to me before shredding them. Stick a change of address on one of those, and you're off to the mall in no time! (not a complaint about the AMA there, just credit around here in general.)

Hossfly

Kirsh:

You are an ever-so-smart operator in defense of the AMA. However I would appreciate it if you have such desire to blast all on the thread over some general statements by a host of other individuals, that you make your (REPLY TO) either the original thread question or to those that you are replying to.

I'm sure that most all those here that belonged to AMA for the last 5 years still get those CC solicitations from AMA's previous drive for such. I suggest they don't have such short memories. Perhaps YOU and AMA have the short mempory. The previous credit card (CC) program didn't really work then and I predict it will not now save the ship from badly listing.

My post's topic is on the economic system where a CC bears the name of an organization and some credits are forwarded to that organization rather than being rebated to the CC user. My post did not subject the "privacy" question yet your blast in (reply to hossfly) is primarily focused on the complainers of such.

In addition your use of myself as an example in your thesis concerning google substantiated your post as being directed at me, even though your topic was tangented far off my subject. As a matter of fact, some time ago, on Google, I found some pleasure in that I am NOT the only Horrace spelled with TWO Rs. Maybe my school teaching mom knew things that I was late to find out. Still, I don't need or solicit your instructions.

Therefore since you appear to be very much on the defense of AMA's operations, I am certain that you can figure out just how this (in reply to) thing works. I suggest you better determine your future targets.

Rocketman612

My Feedback: (85)

Ditto!!! I think the AMA is going to do whatever it takes to scam a buck without our voice in the matter or at least that's how it looks to me.

Pete

smokingcrater

every day! do I encrypt them? no. the big difference is that no personal data would be lost if they were compromised, and the databases I work with that have SSN's or other personal info in them are already encrypted in the db, they are never stored unecrypted.

J_R

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_27...anchor/tm.htm#
What a difference a few days make

abel_pranger

LOL! I still think we're on the same wavelength, and my confusers contain some historical h/w artifacts too. You wouldn't do anything remotely as stupid as the CC companies and the likes of Experian do with your personal information. Doncha' just love it when somebody posts stuff like "they don't send out unsolicited CCs any more?" Though I haven't set foot in one of Sears' medieval stores since ca. 1982, they have sent CCs to me every two years since then, SearsCharge, Discover, etc. Sadly, the Discover card debacle didn't quite deal them the coup de grace. Maybe merging with Kmart will.....one can hope.

Abel

Hossfly

Oh Lordy, JR, there you go showing your ig.. er, uh, I mean venting your frustrations again.

Formatting and etiquette are two different things. Look 'em up in your dictionary. [8D]

Hasn't anyone today fed you something from AMA for you to post here? [>:]

J_R

I'm still wiating to hear your story about the $80,000 and the MA staff.

Hossfly

W I A T I N G: Is that something you do in your pants?