Friday, October 02, 2009

Be careful with your credit cards!

Be careful with your credit card payments! I got a letter in the mail from Discover the other day (it looked unassuming, like most of their advertisements) that said I "triggered the variable Default ANNUAL PERCENTAGE RATE" and my rate was being raised to "Prime + 21.49%"!

I called right away since their customer service is open 24x7 and found out that the cause of the change was the fact that I was 3 days late with 1 payment! The girl looked at my 7 year account history and saw that this was an isolated incident and very quickly reversed the interest rate increase as well as crediting back a $39 fee for me, but still -it's obvious they were hoping I'd never open that letter and they could start charging me 30% interest on any new purchases I make. Shady. Makes me that much more motivated to kick the credit card habit!