College Card not regular line of credit
Campus Times
December 6, 1996
Student Accounts has been handing out applications for the College Card
to University of La Verne students since September but there has been some
confusion as to where students can use the card.
Junior Kimbley Craig, thought the card would be valuable to have, instead
has found out that it is virtually worthless to her.
"I found out the second or the third week that the card didn't
work," she said.
Craig, who tried the card at the University Bookshoppe found out that
students could not use the card to buy books here at ULV.
The problem with students not being able to use the credit card for
books is that there was no manager at the bookstore to facilitate the implementation
process .
"We are working with the bookstore," said Tracee Phanco at
Student Accounts. "We initially intended for the bookstore to take
the College Card but there was not a manager there at the time."
Doug Bradley, a sales clerk at the ULV Bookstore, said, "We haven't
started accepting the card yet. We've been working on it, but it's out of
our hands right now. And we won't be accepting it anytime soon."
Craig has learned students cannot even use the card for tuition if they
are on the payment plan currently offered by ULV.
"I called Student Accounts, and they said that I could use it for
tuition if I was not on a payment plan, because they use different companies
for payment. It's absolutely useless to me now," said Craig.
The College Card can be used for any fee accrued, including tuition,
said Phanco. The only exception is for payment on America's Tuition Plan,
which is a loan program.
Phanco said that students who are on America's Tuition Plan can make
a payment to the University and the University will deduct that much from
the loan. But a student cannot use their College Card to directly pay for
the America's Tuition Plan, which many students use to make payments for
tuition.
"It's like, you're not going to pay your Visa bill with your American
Express," said Phanco.
As with any credit card, Craig has learned that there are disadvantages
that go along with credit.
According to David Heiden, Operations Manager at College Card, the acceptance
of the card is "on a university to university basis."
"The only criteria we have is that the College Card is used for
educational expenses. However, the term educational expenses can cover many
things. For instance at the University of Arizona, they accept it everywhere.
We have 75 outlets there. If you wanted to buy a football game ticket, you
can use the College Card for that. However, at USC (University of Southern
California), it's different. You can use it at the bookstore, but you can
not buy football tickets with it. It's however the campus wants to utilize
the College Card," said Heiden.
When asked about the problems the University of La Verne was having
Heiden was concerned.
"I will contact the main contact at ULV and see what is going on,"
said Heiden.
According to Heiden, the College Card approaches the campus and sees
if the campus would like to utilize the card. The individual universities
then implements their own program. It is not a regular credit card.
"You can't use it across the country. You can only use it on the
campus listed on your card," said Heiden.