Many of you like to disagree and mock my disgust for credit cards. I will face the facts that I am still well in the minority of people who think that credit cards are a horrible financial tool and they only do more harm than good. But, I’m okay with being in the minority on this one. The first time that you get screwed over by Capital One or Chase, you’ll come back to my site and say, “maybe you were right”.
Here’s a great example of credit cards only making changes to help their bottom line and NOT their customers. http://www.smartmoney.com/consumer/index.cfm?story=20061226&”>Click Here for the article.
As you’ll see, credit card companies plan to hike up the balance transfer fee, slash credit card rewards, and find other creative ways to charge you unnecessary fees even when you don’t carry over a balance each month. I know there are some of you out there who sent in your credit card payment five days before it was due, and somehow the credit card company managed to wait until one day after the due date to post the check. Then, you get slapped with a $39 late charge for being one day late. Don’t be surprised if that late fee continues to rise this year and the next. The balance transfer fee is one of the more misleading fees in recent credit card history. It use to be that credit card companies were happy enough with getting your business, so they’d give you an attractive introductory rate incentive and you could transfer over your balance from another card. Now, they start charging a 2 or 3 percent fee of the total balance just for you to send your money over to THEM! This is probably in large part, because consumers started getting credit card savvy and bouncing from one 0% card to another every 12 months. But come on, can’t you be satisfied with getting a consumer’s balance? No, credit card companies will never be satisfied. It is a cut-throat business, because they are throwing out unsecured funds to people who have no means of paying it back. Credit card companies lose millions maybe even billions per year to bankruptcy and defaulted card balances, and that is why they will always be money hungry. They’ll keep coming up with more creative ways to suck money out of your pocket without you realizing it.
And that’s the bottom line. You can disagree, but wait until they do something to you and see how you feel about it.
