Expires 01/14

Today’s question isn’t why credit cards expire. It’s how much work the card holder is saddled with when they do run out. In my case, the expiration date on my VISA is 01/14, and updating the autopays in my online life has already started.

The replacement VISA card arrived in the mail a couple of weeks ago along with simple instructions: Activate immediately. I set it aside figuring I had all of January to comply. That wasn’t a good assumption as I learned when I tried to pay for my health insurance for January.

Technically, I don’t use an online autopay to reimburse Lifewise of Washington, my health insurance provider. But I do store a credit card number on their web site and make a one-time payment with it at the beginning of each month. I couldn’t do that for January. I forget exactly how they worded it, but an error message icily reminded me that the card was no longer valid. That tells me that Lifewise doesn’t really trust VISA, despite getting thousands of dollars from them via my online payments in the past.

So did the card really expire 1/1/14 or is it good through the end of January? I can’t answer that question because rather than argue with a web page, I validated the new card, changed the expiration date under Manage Profile, and tried again. This time the payment was accepted.

Since then I have gotten a text from Verizon and emails from several other vendors concerning the serious matter of 01/14 and my VISA. It seems that when your credit card is about to expire, you get very popular.

I have fairly good records, but I don’t claim to know exactly how many ticking autopay time bombs are about to go off in my digital life. More than a few. Perhaps I should ask the NSA for help. Or let them explode one by one and deal with the collateral damage as it occurs.