The question is: for how many nights do I need to unplug my LCD TV from the mains before I will have saved up enough natural resources to offset the manufacturing, transportation and other handling of the 2 extension cords? We are still quite far from having that level of transparency into the effects of the decisions we make as consumers. This leaves the door open for all kind of “eco friendly” product positioning, which tries to enforce the paradox that you need to “buy new stuff to save the environment”. The message is simply more compelling than the alternative of “buy less stuff”, as that would mean we’d have to learn how to give up something that we could have. How could I ever give up my right to own plastic gadgets that run on electricity?

I decided to invalidate my Visa right away and proceeded in cutting the card in half. With a one week delivery time for the new card, I’m sure glad I’ve recently opened an account also in another bank. S-Pankki gives me a free Visa with no strings attached, whereas Nordea has decided to screw their so called “key customers” and make them pay an annual fee for their Visa, unless they actively change your card type to a version with a credit limit (which then removes the fee). Hmm, why didn’t my “personal account manager” mention this to me when we met face to face at Nordea?

That’s not the only beef I have with Nordea. Last winter when they started providing their own Visa instead of the previous service from Luottokunta, Nordea decided to impose additional limitations to their terms and conditions. Unlike what Visa themselves say, Nordea only allows you to use the credit card in online shops that are using the Verified by Visa security measure, where you need to give your online banking passwords in addition to the credit card number. Since most of the shops I have used do not apply this process, the risk of having Nordea refuse to cover the costs in a credit fraud case is just way too big for me to accept. This latest incident is actually a good opportunity for me to check that all my user accounts at various online resellers have already been migrated to use my S-Pankki Visa, which does not have any such arbitrary conditions.