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Aug. 15th, 2006 03:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leticiaOh, BTW: out of curiosity because of recent discussions, I got my free credit report from one of the big guys just now: I'd like to note that a) I have an obscenely high credit score for someone who has been under-self-employed for the past few years, especially given insane things like charging jaunts across the country I couldn't afford on my credit card (really, how gullible AM I?) and b) one of the things they recommend to raise my credit score as they count it is... to have more credit cards.
Yes, folks. This is the way the current banking industry works. The more credit is already extended to you, the more they want to give you. Because after a certain point, like years of loan and credit card payments on a timely manner, they don't figure you're gonna default. /They just want to make sure they're going to get a piece of the action/.
This is what rewards cards and rolling due dates and 'credit protection' and 'special interest rates on balance transfers, just a 3% transaction fee' are all about. Getting a piece of the action if you happen to be a responsible spender and pay things on time.
Annual fees are more honest.
Yes, folks. This is the way the current banking industry works. The more credit is already extended to you, the more they want to give you. Because after a certain point, like years of loan and credit card payments on a timely manner, they don't figure you're gonna default. /They just want to make sure they're going to get a piece of the action/.
This is what rewards cards and rolling due dates and 'credit protection' and 'special interest rates on balance transfers, just a 3% transaction fee' are all about. Getting a piece of the action if you happen to be a responsible spender and pay things on time.
Annual fees are more honest.
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no subject
Date: 2006-08-15 02:51 pm (UTC)If the government raised sales taxes three percent there would be a lot of complaints. This is the same thing.
no subject
Date: 2006-08-15 05:20 pm (UTC)Every time you use a credit card - at least in the US - the merchant is charged a percentage by the card-issuer. This is why when cards were first becoming popular, many merchants charged a surcharge for credit card purchases and why many merchants still won't take credit cards on purchases under a certain amount.
And you think the /merchant/ ends up swallowing those costs? Nope; when credit cards became so widespread that it wasn't Acceptable Business Practice to charge differently for them to recoup the expense, they simply had to calculate the predicted number of credit card purchases right into the cost.
Which everyone winds up paying.