It seems that the ability to ride a two-wheeled bicycle is the only criteria Texas-based USAA Savings Bank requires to offer pre-approved credit applications for MasterCard accounts. How else can the bank explain sending such a correspondence to a seven-year-old child because that is precisely what happened to a young Greenridge, Staten Island resident.
It is estimated that the average American household receives approximately fifty credit card solicitations in the mail every year. Travis B. Plunkett, legislative director of Consumer Federation of America (a consumer advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.) estimates that only about one in every 250 mailings receives a response, or roughly 0.3 percent. Despite this very small percentage, the average consumer carries more than $7,400 in credit-card debt.
A spokeswoman for USAA said that the young girl from Greenridge was not the only child who had mistakenly been sent the pre-approved credit application, but could not give an exact number of erroneous underage recipients. Parents of children who receive credit card applications should not ignore the mailing. They should immediately advise the issuer of the mistake and instruct them to delete the minor's name and personal information from their data base.
As for the seven-year-old girl from Greenridge--she is truly disappointed that she will not be able to go shopping, after all.
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Hi, I’m Dave Snowden from USAA. I just wanted to clarify that USAA Federal Savings Bank does not provide credit cards to minors; the minimum age requirement for our credit cards is 18 years old.
Recently, in the process of marketing credit cards to our customers, some minors were unintentionally included in a mailing. The situation was quickly identified and corrected.
USAA is committed to partnering with our members to teach their children to make wise financial decisions. We provide parents with a variety of tools and resources to help them encourage early financial responsibility.
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