Big banks don't give us due credit

    Every day -- you get them, too -- I am invited to apply for a credit card that earns points for every dollar I charge.
    And I am always pre-qualified, with potential interest rates as low as a Kardashian neckline if I apply now. They'll let me know later if my new credit card is at the lowest rate possible, or a rate adjusted for my buying misadventures of the past, if any.
    In other words, you don't have a clue as to what kind of interest rate you're going to get.
    Sometimes, you are offered a $25 gift card, which may have a little number beside the note directing you to the fine print.
    I got one the other day saying I have to buy something first, then the gift card will be in the mail. Please allow four weeks for delivery card, and I must comply with all the enclosed terms and conditions.
    Terms and conditions takes up two legal sized pages, one in normal size print, and a second in what we used to call 6 point, but what a reader might just call squint.  These two pages, boiled down to basics, explain that they have you by the short hairs, and even if you win an argument, it will be your responsibility to pay their lawyers for defending themselves against their mistake.
    What a deal.
     I liked it better when banks were represented in short silent films as the leering dude in a stovepipe hat and black cape who burns the house if you can't make the mortgage payment, and ties the virgin to the railroad tracks if she won't submit to his advances.
    If you spend $40 to $80 for a membership card to a big box store, you can save that much over a year in the cost of Cheerios, which is five if you have a place to park a railroad car out back for the volume buying thing.
     The last time I had dealings with any bank, it was local, or so I thought. I went in to the building where I had banked for years, even though the name changed several times in a decade, and dealt with people I have known for years.
     In a day or two, I get a call from "MY" representative at the bank, only I don't recognize the name. No wonder. Turns out she's a marketing type person in the bank's offices in Pittsburgh, or Philly, or was it Milwaukee?
     I had to threaten to cancel the transaction altogether to regain and retain the right to deal with the person I know at my local bank branch.
     But then, when I started there, bank had a local name; remember when banks had names that began with Westminster, or Taneytown, or at least Carroll County?
     Now, it seems, all the banks are named after football stadiums. Oh, I know, it's supposedly the other way around, but haven't you been gang tackled by a financial institution lately?