Do you know your credit card can cheat you. It can spend your hard earned money within seconds without coming in your knowledge. Of course credit card is a financial tool for you as well as your credit card issuer companies. They use various methods to steal your money like late fees, interest charges, insurance fees, free offers and so on.
This happens due to people prefers to avoid reading the fine prints in Terms & Conditions documents. Credit card company mentions everything there by stating, company is supreme authority and only local court can restrict them to take your money. Here we compiled a list of tricky practices of credit card companies to aware our readers.
#1 Late fees
You have experienced that company charges late fee from you despite you have deposited money on due date. Certainly there is a reason you did not noticed. Credit card company use to give a due date with time. If they have mentioned time up to 2 p.m. and you pay after 2 p.m. even though at 2.02 p.m. your company is free to charge late fee from your account as per card’s terms & conditions. Therefore do not forget to read that time too to escape late fee in future.
#2 Balance Transfer Fee
People who used ultimate feature of balance transfer through their credit cards are familiar with this trick. Company may allow you to purchase anything on lower interest rate but it does not stop credit card company to charge higher balance transfer fee. Mostly company takes a flat rate of 2 to 4 percent fee of total balance transferred amount in addition to other charges. Moreover company starts to count interest rates immediately right after the moment you avail balance transfer facility.
#3 Address Change
Often credit card companies change their payment receiving address without informing their consumers. It results into your failure to deposit payment on time because of sending it to old address and you have to pay late fee plus interest charges for no valid reasons. You should confirm every time their payment address through either viewing credit statement or online updates. Alternatively you can talk to consumer care service to get immediate answer for new address.
#4 Cash Advance Fee
Alike balance transfer, cash advance is another tool of credit card companies to cheat you. It has similar functionalities of balance transfer with a slight change that it provides you cash in hand instead transferring into another account. Company starts to counting interest immediately after having cash advance. Additionally you have to pay cash advance fee to company with other charges so be alert next time you think to utilize cash advance from your credit card.
February 16, 2012
Credit Cards