Clark Howard's Tips
Fee harvesting is the latest ploy by credit card companiesFebruary 18, 2008
People with damaged credit have a new bull's-eye on their backs.
The nation's banks are doing mailings for MasterCards and Visas that are just awful. They're offering cards with low credit limits of a few hundred dollars. The catch is that they charge fees to get the card that nearly equal the credit limit they've given you.
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CLARK'S TIP TOPICS
Find more consumer advice in Clark Howard's book, "Get Clark Smart" |
This tactic has been called "fee harvesting" by the National Consumer Law Center. That's because there's a multitude of subtle fees that they load on. These can include an annual fee, a setup fee, a program fee and a participation fee.
The New York Times reports that Capital One and CompuCredit are some of the worst offenders. Except for the annual fee, all of these other fees are completely bogus. You think they're doing you a big favor by taking you on as a customer. But they eliminate all their risk by hitting you upfront with huge ridiculous fees.
Clark thinks the practice is diabolical but pretty clever in a sad sort of way. So beware if you're suddenly getting an offer for a card and nobody else has wanted you -- it could be a fee harvesting ploy coming your way.
