{"id":40645,"date":"2011-12-07T12:51:39","date_gmt":"2011-12-07T18:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/?p=40645"},"modified":"2020-09-21T13:33:42","modified_gmt":"2020-09-21T17:33:42","slug":"5-most-criminally-shady-credit-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/5-most-criminally-shady-credit-cards\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Most Criminally Shady Credit Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/montage3.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"montage\" width=\"500\" height=\"700\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-40649 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/montage3.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/montage3-214x300.jpg 214w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 500px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 500\/700;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding: 0px 0px 0pt 0pt; float: left;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/digg.com\/tools\/diggthis.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div>\n<div style=\"padding: 5px 5px 5pt 5pt; float: left;\"><a name=\"fb_share\" type=\"box_count\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Share<\/a><script src=\"http:\/\/static.ak.fbcdn.net\/connect.php\/js\/FB.Share\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/div>\n<div style=\"padding: 0px 2px 0pt 0pt; float: left;\">\n<script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/tweetmeme.com\/i\/scripts\/button.js\"><\/script><\/div>\n<p>Credit is the lifeblood of any well-functioning economy.\u00a0 It allows us to buy cars, houses, education and terabytes of filthy, filthy porn (you know, the stuff so filthy you can&#8217;t find it for free).\u00a0 For most people, their most accessible line of credit is a credit card &#8212; basically an instant ability to cover sudden outrageous expenses without having to pawn belongings.\u00a0 If you don&#8217;t have a credit card, you better have a rainy-day fund as big as Scrooge McDuck or else you&#8217;re one car repair or medical expense away from bankruptcy.\u00a0 Credit card companies know that customers depend on this line of credit, sometimes desperately, so they do their best to provide it an easy and simple a fashion as possible.\u00a0 Just kidding, they try to gouge customers for every last red cent in anyway that will keep them technically legal.\u00a0 Or they&#8217;ll just take your money without telling you.\u00a0 You know, like the exact definition of a thief.\u00a0<br \/>\n<!--more-->\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>&#8220;Fee-Harvesting&#8221; Cards<\/h2>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/fees.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"fees\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-40647 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/fees.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/fees-300x169.jpg 300w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 500px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 500\/282;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.creditcards.com\/credit-card-news\/images\/fee-harvesting.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Image Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u2028\u00a0<br \/>\nFor those with low incomes or abysmal credit scores, getting a credit card with a decent interest rate and credit limit can be a frustrating challenge.\u00a0 Once you finally do find a creditor willing to give you the time of day, you&#8217;re likely to end up with an usurious interest rate and a credit limit roughly high enough to buy some crusts of stale bread and weeks-old milk.\u00a0 While unfortunate, from a business perspective this makes sense.\u00a0 A bank can&#8217;t simply go lending out money to high-risk individuals without trying to protect their investment somewhat, so it&#8217;s hard to blame them for being careful and circumspect about who they extend credit to.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Or it would be, if this is what actually happened.\u00a0 In reality, these cards for the credit-poor are often what experts refer to as \u201cFee-Harvesting\u201d cards.\u00a0 What this means is that someone might get a card with a limit of $200-$300 dollars, and an interest rate in the high 20s.\u00a0 Buried in the fine print of the agreement is a whole bevy of fees, often adding up to a huge chunk of the customer&#8217;s credit limit.\u00a0 In one case, a customer with a credit limit of $250 was only able to put <A href=\"http:\/\/redtape.msnbc.msn.com\/_news\/2009\/04\/21\/6345767-the-worst-credit-card-offers-youll-ever-see\">$50 on the card<\/a> after all the fees were applied.\u00a0 The worst part about all of this is that the fees apply whether or not the card is used or paid off each month.\u00a0 Meaning that someone who doesn&#8217;t pay attention to the fine print, and barely uses the card at all, can suddenly find themselves hundreds of dollars in debt after a few months.\u00a0 And that debt will only continue to pile on at that incredibly high interest rate.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>From the credit card company&#8217;s point of view, they just got someone hundreds of dollars indebted to them, without having to extend more than a few bucks of credit up front.\u00a0 This is why they apply the fees, instead of just making the credit limit that much lower.\u00a0 This apparently all happens as they cackle cravenly while swimming through piles of money and murdered puppies while ignoring evidence that severe debt can often lead to <A href=\"http:\/\/www.creditcards.com\/credit-card-news\/debt-depression-and-suicide-1264.php\">depression and suicide<\/a>.\u00a0\u2028\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>Monogram Credit Card Bank of Georgia<\/h2>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/monogram.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"monogram\" width=\"500\" height=\"333\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-40648 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/monogram.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/monogram-300x199.jpg 300w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 500px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 500\/333;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/getacreditcardwithnocredit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/large1.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Image Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\nBelieve it or not, those promotional in-store cards that usually come along with some sort of discount or interest-free purchase are actual credit cards.\u00a0 You could use your Sears card at Home Depot and your Best Buy card to buy cigarettes at the corner store.\u00a0 A large section of these cards are issued by Monogram Credit Card Bank of Georgia, which delights in teaming up with retailers to bend customers <A href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0094608\/\">over a pinball machine<\/a>.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In what you&#8217;ll begin to notice is a recurring pattern, customers are misled about the terms of whatever deal they&#8217;re signing, whether through terms, interest rates, or hidden fees.\u00a0 One good example of the sociopathic deft of Monogram was a promotion with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.consumeraffairs.com\/news04\/home_depot_lowes.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Home Depot and Lowes<\/a>.\u00a0 Customers were allowed to purchase items using the store&#8217;s credit cards, and pay them off interest-free.\u00a0 Except they never mentioned to the customers that they were required to pay down the interest-free balance before anything else, meaning customers who purchased anything else were forced to watch that item gather interest while they paid down the cheaper balance first.\u00a0 (Fortunately, this practice is now illegal).\u00a0<br \/>\n \u00a0<br \/>\nUnsurprisingly, several class-action lawsuits have been brought <a href=\"http:\/\/www.consumeraffairs.com\/credit_cards\/monogram_bank.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">against Monogram<\/a>.\u00a0 Monogram responded by saying \u201cthat&#8217;s so quaint\u201d and pointing out the required arbitration clause in the customers contracts\u2014basically guaranteeing that any complaints won&#8217;t be able to legally see the inside of a courtroom.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>Bank of America Credit Cards<\/h2>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Bank_of_America-online1.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Bank_of_America\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-40646 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Bank_of_America-online1.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Bank_of_America-online1-300x225.jpg 300w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 500px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 500\/375;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.top10list.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/Bank_of_America-online.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Image Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\nOh Bank of America.\u00a0 When you aren&#8217;t trying to charge $5 for using your debit card each month, you&#8217;re borrowing billions of dollars from the Federal Reserve and making billions off of taxpayer money.\u00a0 It seems like there&#8217;s no money you won&#8217;t take, and no one you&#8217;ll avoid paying it out to (except your executive bonuses, of course).\u00a0 So because they hadn&#8217;t found enough avenues for evil-doing, BofA decided their credit card arm should get involved in the financial wizardry of tricking people into owing the bank more than they could possibly afford.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wesabe.com\/groups\/159-savvysugar\/discussions\/2485-ex-bofa-employees-reveal-banks-shady-credit-card-tactics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">former support people<\/a> came forward in 2008 and admitted to a host of unethical and illegal practices that were rampant throughout the company.\u00a0 These two former employees worked in a call center, which was ostensibly there to help customers with questions or account issues.\u00a0 Their actual purpose was to push huge cash advances on customer&#8217;s credit cards onto people who couldn&#8217;t afford them.\u00a0 As one of the employees put it, instead of helping the customers,\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cEvery customer that calls in is a mark, it&#8217;s a great big con\u201d.\u00a0 Some of these advances totaled upward of fifty to one hundred thousand real actual dollars.\u00a0 The interest rates on these loans? As high as <i>28%<\/i>.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>One of the hilarious unintended consequences of offering people tens of thousands of dollars right now, is \u201csupport\u201d reps had trouble convincing customers they had anything to spend several grand on.\u00a0 The favorite expense they suggested was using the cash advance for a down payment on a house.\u00a0 Since down payments are used as a way for home buyers to prove that they have enough money to make regular mortgage payments, borrowing the money for a down payment is highly illegal.\u00a0 BofA circumvented this by telling customers they could deposit cash advances in their checking accounts, and what happened to the money was the customer&#8217;s business.\u00a0 So yes, one of the largest financial institutions in America literally went with the \u201cI&#8217;m going to take this money and leave the drugs here on the table, what you do with them is not my responsibility\u201d defense.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>The VISA Black Card<\/h2>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/visa-black-card.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"visa-black-card\" width=\"500\" height=\"266\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-40651 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/visa-black-card.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/visa-black-card-300x159.jpg 300w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 500px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 500\/266;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/uncrate.com\/p\/2008\/12\/visa-black-card.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Image Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\nSome of you may be familiar with the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Centurion_Card\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">American Express Centurion card<\/a>, and by familiar, I mean you&#8217;ve heard someone rich brag about it.\u00a0 If you actually own one, please stop reading this and immediately give to the <a href=\"http:\/\/i39.tinypic.com\/210av5k.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">You Have Way Too Much Stinking Money Fund for Poor Internet Writers<\/a>.\u00a0 It&#8217;s basically a card for the super-rich that requires a $2500 annual fee but gets American Express to be your personal bitch.\u00a0 It holds a Guinness Record for shortest time from reveal to panties hitting the floor in history.\u00a0 Basically if you have the AMEX Centurion, your credit problems involve figuring out which supermodel to sleep with, or which low-income community will be the least-likely to fight your company&#8217;s toxic waste dumpings in court.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/story\/11179290\/1\/3-worst-credit-cards-on-the-market.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">VISA Black card<\/a> is marketed to those with decent credit who want to look cool to idiots and like complete tools to everyone else.\u00a0 The card requires an annual payment close to $500 dollars, putting it well near the top of the market as far as annual payments for normal people things go.\u00a0For this hefty payout, the lucky owner of this card gets\u2026 well, shittier terms than just about any other comparable credit card.\u00a0 A 14.99% APR doesn&#8217;t look too attractive when a little bit of bargaining can get most credit cards into the single-digits. VISA is essentially piggy-backing on the luxury image of the Centurion card to sell an inferior product to people who don&#8217;t understand personal finance.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>PayPal<\/h2>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/paypal.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"paypal\" width=\"500\" height=\"326\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-40650 lazyload\" data-srcset=\"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/paypal.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/paypal-300x195.jpg 300w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 500px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 500\/326;\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/ojith.com\/portal\/images\/stories\/paypal.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Image Source<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\nMost of us know PayPal as that thing that we use to buy stuff on eBay with, and also probably the <A href=\"https:\/\/cms.paypal.com\/us\/cgi-bin\/?cmd=_render-content&#038;content_ID=marketing_us\/fees\">expensive way<\/a> to get money on or off the Internet (as opposed to, oh I don&#8217;t know, an actual credit card).\u00a0 For those who are fans of redundancy, PayPal also offers a <a href=\"https:\/\/personal.paypal.com\/us\/cgi-bin\/?cmd=_render-content&#038;content_ID=marketing_us\/paypal_credit_card\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">credit card<\/a>.\u00a0 To online retailers and freelance workers, PayPal can be a convenient way to move money around the Internet with relative speed and convenience, and some people like the idea of keeping these accounts separate from their bank or \u201creal\u201d credit cards.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The problem arises not with the card itself, but when you try to get access to the money in your PayPal account to pay off your balance.\u00a0 Funny enough, PayPal is <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/PayPal#Bank_status\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">not legally considered a bank<\/a>, meaning it&#8217;s not subject to the reams of laws and consumer protections that banks are.\u00a0 While this makes sense because PayPal actually holds on to your money (instead of lending it out as banks do), that means you&#8217;re dealing with a private company with their own policies about how you get to your money, and we all know that customer support is a real joy to deal with when you&#8217;re trying to transfer funds to pay your bills on time or avoid a ten percent jump in interest rates on your credit card. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>What does this mean for the average PayPal user?\u00a0 It means that, &#8220;for whatever reason at any time because we want to, so now go fuck yourselves, that&#8217;s why&#8221;, PayPal can freeze your account and redistribute funds as it sees fit.\u00a0 This happens especially often to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aboutpaypal.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">online merchants<\/a>, and pretty much all the time during informal <A href=\"http:\/\/www.regretsy.com\/2011\/12\/05\/cats-1-kids-0\/\">charity events<\/a>.\u00a0 In one case, more than $30,000 raised for victims of Hurricane Katrina had to be returned.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.somethingawful.com\/d\/news\/paypal-fiasco-summary.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">No reason<\/a>, just because PayPal thought it looked \u201csuspicious\u201d.\u00a0 And while every other credit card company on the planet will inevitably try to suck a few extra fees and interest rate hikes out of you, at the very least they let you spend your own money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 Share Credit is the lifeblood of any well-functioning economy.\u00a0 It allows us to buy cars, houses, education and terabytes of filthy, filthy porn (you know, the stuff so filthy you can&#8217;t find it for free).\u00a0 For most people, their most accessible line of credit is a credit card &#8212; basically an instant ability to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":40649,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[7241,5305],"class_list":{"0":"post-40645","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-credit-cards","9":"tag-toparticles"},"acf":[],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71916,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40645\/revisions\/71916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businesspundit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}