This doesnt surprise me one bit...GE did the same thing when I worked for them...when walmart pushed out there dual card the Walmart Discover, there were thousands of inactive regular Walmart accounts...most from the Montgomery Wards to Walmart card conversion...most with small limits $200-$2k. The initial MW to Walmart conversion was to move there MW balances over to the Walmart accounts since they were new for GE at the time...Well GE wanted to get some debt in the books we assumed...boy did they! And wanted to launch a million plus cards out...They converged the inactive Walmart accounts into Discover accounts...well we found out why they were inactive...most of the inactive account holders either moved or never really got the initial card or threw it away. Well imagine the shock of getting a $5k-15k discover card in the mail

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AROUND XMAS TIME lol...its like a lottery but its a credit card. You had everybody and there baby's mother using those cards...they were pushing those cards like candy at the time with OK ficos...I mean if it were today I would probably have $5k-7k discover...so would alot of us...well of course there was ALOT of fraud, check kiting you name it---grand daughters and daughters using there grandma's cards...I remember calling a young girl---she was maybe 18 or 19...we gave her $10k...this girl was at footlocker, and the gap like every day...I call her and ask her about her payment, she had the audacity to ask me why her payments went up so high from her 1st statement...her 1st statement had maybe a $300 balance... this girl ran up over $9500 in 25 DAYS in shoes, clothes and fast food!And the funny thing about it after she ran her CL to the max was "why isnt my card working?" I told her- "her free ride was up and now it way time to pay for the goods" LMAO...I didnt collect a dime from this girl...she was broke, its also funny because at GE our system could tell us anytime you swiped your card...this girl actually tried to buy more shoes from footlocker and clothes from the gap and kept getting declined AFTER I talked to her...she must of tried to swipe the card atleast 15 times anyways I hope citi doesnt flop like GE did at converging inactive accounts, because it sound pretty dangerous to leave yourself out there like this to fraud. -Eric-

Creditors do give you the option to opt out from this, but they also say in small print, they will still use it for their purposes and their affiliates. Not just anyone.

Security is not only the issue here. I am concerned with companies selling my information to other companies and then they take it upon themselves to do what they want to in my name. This is no different then joe blow getting my information and signing me up for something.

Who do they think they are, and I think that more consumers need to start fighting these types of practice and laws need to be put in place because I do not believe they have the right to sell my information to anyone. When you sign something with one company (whether active or not), you are not giving them permission to sell your information unless they specifically state that. I have never seen that anywhere. It should be illegal for them to do, and I do believe that there is some in the Fair Debt Act that relates to this type of thing.

This is pretty funny because this raises a security concern and I'm sitting here wanting one of them

Good question. I know nothing about the card, other than from the news source

How do the Macy's Mastercards look like anyway?

I agree, Citi made a retarded decision. I work at Citi in their collections dept. I handle the CitiMastercards (the ones that replaced the Macy's, Radioshack and others), their retail and gas cards too!

I wouldn't mind receiving a Macy's Mastercard because I would be able to use it anywhere instead of only Macy's. However, if they're sending these cards to cardholders who haven't used their cards for quite some time, then it does raise a security concern. They should have some type of security protection questionnaire before activating the card. That would help a lot.

It really looks like Macy's is pushing their MasterCard, and may soon enough do away with their store card. It looks like an effort anyway. This is really a big and irresponsible move for Macy's to reissue these cards in the millions without knowing who will use them, and the risks involved for the consumer after being inactive for 2-4 years.

thanks mike that helped alot because i really dont need another card with a high credit limit because then i would be tempted to use it "alot"

Hi Pamela,

It looks like you won't get a new card sent to you since your account has not been inactive for 2-4 years. As far as your credit limit goes, I would wait another 6 months and ask for a CLI if all has been in good standing.

hi mike i have had a Macy's card for about 6 months and i have never used it do you think they will send that stuff to me????? i mean i would like to use my card but my credit limit is only 100.00 so if i use online i cant get much and the nearest store is about 120 miles from where i live. so what do you think????? any info will help thanks pamela

Now that is the scary part. I did not think about it in this way. This is a very important topic because I recently moved to my new house and the people who stayed here prior to me did not change their mail. I had a big bag full of bank statements, preapprovals, warrants for arrests, cc statements, and every up to date thing you could find. I kept it for 2 months and after that, I sat down and wrote "return to sender" on every letter and dumped it in the mailbox.

About 4 or 5 months ago, a guy came here and asked did he receive any mail and that he was the previous owner, so I left him outside, went to check the mail and there was something there, a credit card. I told him NO (becasue it was a woman's name on it) and returned it to the post-office with "return to sender" on it. Come to find out, it was his exgirlfriend mail where he applied for credit and wanted to damage it. My neighbor told me that he used to always do her entire family like this.

This may not be relevant to the story but it is another reflection of what happens when a theif gets ahold to your background to destroy your credit. So I can imaging how the people who never activated their cards feel. I would have had a guilty contious if I would have given the mail to him.

No Meya, I haven't. Did they send you one? The real problem lies in that they sent the cards to inactive customers (2-4 years). Can you imagine how many of these customers moved, and have never updated their address?

Hi FG, have you heard anything else about this issue?