The credit card company that keeps on taking by what in my view are patently deceptive practices. Recently, I signed up for Discover's promotional balance transfer and began paying down the balance as agreed.
After a couple months the card company sent me "Hurry and use your card now! Get $10 cash back on any purchase." I carefully examined all the disclosures on the offer and thought, well why not earn $10 and made a small under $50 purchase.
Of course, I should have known that a card company would not bother with full disclosure opting instead for the deceptive practice of baiting it's customers into using their card under false pretenses. Discover promptly started charging me interest on my small purchase. When I called to ask about this, not one, but two arrogant customer service representatives told me that it was my responsibility to read the 25 page card member agreement and NOT Discover's responsibility to disclose any of this on their "Hurry, use your card and get $10 now!" promotion.
To add further insult to deceptive practice, Discover's customer relations or should I say customer abuse personnel went on to tell me that I would never even receive the $10 unless I continued to use the card and make more purchases that would eventually total enough for my "Cash-Back" account to equal $20 because that is the minimum amount Discover considers valid to give cash-back. Apparently, they just keep any amounts under $20 for themselves because after all why would a consumer care about anything less than $20? As if $19.25 was a penny to be left on the sidewalk.
My only alternative was to either pay-off my entire "balance-transfer" as well as the small purchase I made because Discover baited me into using the card under the false pretense of giving me $10, or to live with paying interest on any purchases I made until my promotional balance transfer is paid off.
Discover's management can only be described by me as unethical, and if the Fed Reserve and Congress act on pending re-regulations that have not been pushed by our "business-friendly" Republican friends of the rich and the Bush Administration such behavior by Discover and other card companies will be (as it should be) illegal.
"Another part of the plan would create restrictions on how lenders apply payments borrowers make on their credit cards, people familiar with the matter said. If a borrower has a $500 balance at an introductory rate of 0% and another $500 balance at 10%, the lender would be prohibited from allocating payments only to the 0% balance first." Source: Wall St Jr April 29, 2008 "A Credit-Card Crack Down."
I do, however, have something positive to say about another credit card company. Citibank is my credit card bank of choice under the MasterCard umbrella. They have always gone out of their way to explain and disclose their offers so that consumers like myself can make an informed choice. I have been loyal to them over the decades, and they have in-turn gone so far as to reverse charges and fees even when it was my mistake if I didn't understand something.
As they say "that's why the Citibank MasterCard is the only card I need."
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