Should I Get Another Credit Card Before Moving Overseas?

By: Mr Credit Card

11/04/2009

Dear Mr. Credit Card,

I wanted to ask a question not many people have asked on your site. I am moving to Sydney, Australia in a couple weeks and will only be staying in their country for about a year. I’ve been unemployed but will be working there in Australia. I only have one credit card, which is a Discover Card and is not accepted in Australia, so I’m pretty sure I need to pay only the minimum balance on it until I come back to the States. I’m confused about if I should apply for a new credit card in Australia or while I’m still here in the States or if I should cancel my Discover card.

Mr. Edward Park

Answers – There are two ways you can go about doing this. You can apply for either a Visa or a MasterCard before you leave for Australia (but do it quick) since they are the most universally accepted worldwide. The only problem with that is that all US based cards (perhaps with the exception of some Capital One cards) charge a 2% or 3% fee for foreign transaction. Hence, for one year, you’ll simply be paying more for using a US based card overseas. The other issue you have to consider is that you will probably want to set up autopay from a US bank account to pay this card if you use it. You have to make sure you have enough money in this US based bank or if not, you have to set up a monthly transfer from your bank in Australia.

Alternatively, you could get a card from Australia and make it easier for yourself. Most Australian banks will issue either a Visa or MasterCard. You could also get an American Express there. The advantage of having an overseas Amex card is that Amex will issue you one US based card for every overseas card you have. So that may be a good way to enable you to get an Amex when you get back after one year. The disadvantage of having an Australian based credit card is that it is not tracked by the credit bureaus and hence all your timely payments will not help you in building your credit history while you are away.

If I were you, I will not cancel my Discover card because it is a great card and you can use it after you get back here. I would also get a card in Australia rather than trying to get one here.

Airlines And Credit Card Fees

By: Jason Steele

11/03/2009

Chris Elliot has a provocative article about airlines and credit card fees. He suggests that this is the next frontier in the fee war that airlines have been waging on customers for several years now. He cites two discount carriers, Allegiant and Spirit as having de facto credit card fees.

My Take

While I share his outrage at the airlines for their reckless treatment of their customers, I am not sure that Allegiant and Spirit are actually applying credit card fees. This fee applies to everyone who does not purchase a ticket at the airport. To me, it is just a hidden fee so that they can advertise low fares, and string prospective ers as far along the road to a ticket purchase as possible, before disclosing the real price. Sadly, this practice is becoming more and more common with companies from cell phone carriers charging “regulatory recovery” fees to auto mechanics adding “shop fees”. Don’t even get me started on event ticket “convenience fees” These fees are all wrong and bad, but it is still not the same thing as a credit card fee, so long as they are not pushing you towards another method of payment. Doing so would violate their merchant agreements with Mastercard, Visa, and the like.

When Is It Good To Pay Credit Card Fees?

Some European discount airlines are starting to accept PayPal, electronic checks, or other financing options in lieu of credit cards. In this case, they are actually charging an additional fee for credit cards.

When would I pay these fees? My gut response is never, however there may come a time where they are a necessary evil. When it comes to travel, airlines in particular, it has long been held as a rule that you should always pay for your ticket with a credit card. This is so that when airlines go out of business, you are protected. Every time it happens, the news reports inform customers that if they paid with a credit card, they merely have to contact their bank and they will get their money back. People who paid any other way are essentially hung out to dry. If and when airlines start adding fees for credit card use, I will probably pay them, albeit reluctantly and with disgust.

What Fees You Should Worry About

I am not as worried about pure credit card fees from the airlines as I am with undisclosed foreign transaction fees. Elliot hits the nail on the head when he berates companies for sneaking these in, seemingly at random, whenever some part of a transaction can be tied to some foreign company. In all cases, these fees are reversed when you take the time to complain to your bank. That is further evidence that these fees are bogus, and that it is up to you to notice them and complain. At this rate, any time you anything not made in the United States, you will risk getting hit with these bogus fees. Elliot points out that the banks have already been hit with a major class action suit on this matter, and they seemed to have learned nothing.

Until then, be sure to use a card that does not charge foreign transaction fees whenever you are actually making purchases in other currencies. Such cards include the Schwab Bank card or any card from Capitol One. It doesn’t hurt that these cards offer really good cash back rewards as well.

CARD Tricks

By: Jason Steele

11/02/2009

As predicted, the cat and mouse game that is CARD Act compliance just took a new turn. It seems that some Capitol One cardholders are receiving an interesting proposition.

You Have The Right To Remain Compliant. If You Choose To Give Up That Right……

One of the provisions of the CARD act is that banks will no longer be able to approve transaction that are over your credit limit, only to charge you “over the limit” fees. Actually, the law specifies that you must choose to allow these fees. The theory behind these fees, as told by the credit card companies, is that you would much rather get a $39 “over the limit” fee than have a charge denied. Presumably, the emotional damage from that denial will cause lifelong psychological issues for you that make the $39 fee worth it for your coffee charge to go through. To most consumers, this is a great way for credit card companies to gouge you by approving an over the limit transaction, and then slapping a huge charge on to it.

Capitol One’s pitch, as described at this post on The Consumerist, is to get you to opt in to them being able to approve over the limit charges by giving you something in return. What are they giving you? They are generously offering to reduce their over the limit fee from $39 to $29. It’s like the mob saying “we ain’t allowed to break your legs no more, but if it’s OK with you, we’ll just smash your toes.”

Needless to say, I do not advise anyone to give up their rights under the CARD act. If you bump up against your limit, you should have your charge declined. It is no big deal. I get charges declined from time to time. It is almost always because a merchant is running my card incorrectly, or some other technical glitch. Somehow I manage to go on.

What To Do If You Are At Or Near Your Limit

At the risk of stating the obvious, call the credit card company up and ask for your limit to be raised. If you have a good payment history, and haven’t had your limit raised recently, you will probably get an immediate answer. The worst they can say is no. Another important thing to remember is that you should never have a single credit card. There are many reasons for this, and in fact your credit score will be higher if you have five credit cards than if you have only one or two. One of the big reasons for this is that you can always use another credit card if you max one out. If you need more credit, it you can also appeal to multiple companies if you have multiple cards.

When Have I Ever Maxed Out A Card?

Those of you who read this page regularly know that I only use credit cards as method of payment, not a means of finance. That is another way of saying that I never carry a balance. I always pay my entire balance in full every month. That said, I can remember a couple of times that I needed a balance increase. Early in my career, I traveled a lot for business. I could easily incur thousands of dollars a week in airfare and other travel expenses. My company would promptly reimburse me, and I would pay off the balance in full when the bill would come due. That meant that I might have up to a $15,000 balance at the time my payment was due. This was far more than I could imagine in personal expenses. Thankfully, my credit card company had no problem increasing my credit limit to accommodate me. Three years ago, I sold my condo and bought a 70 year old house. I took some of the proceeds from the condo sale to use to renovate the house. I spent tens of thousands of dollars in a very short time period. As usual, I charged everything to my credit card, and paid it all off in full, yet I also required a credit limit increase to handle that project. If I were to graph out my expenses, the resulting line would resemble a python eating a large mammal!

In Conclusion

Don’t be fooled into giving up your rights under the CARD Act. Over the limit fees are a egregious rip off, and that is why they will soon be illegal. Somehow, the banks got Congress to grant them a loophole for suckers. Don’t be one of those suckers. There are many, many good options to paying an “over the limit” fee.

Who Pays What Of Credit Card Transactions

By: Mr Credit Card

10/31/2009

The following is a guest post from www.MerchantCouncil.org – an unbiased site that helps merchants find the best merchant account for their business. While most of you are familiar with APRs, rewards and the typical stuff, I think this is an interesting look at the type of fees credit card issuers impose on merchants.

Many things happen behind the scenes to facilitate the process that’s initiated when a cardholder presents their credit card to a merchant as payment for goods or services. Balances are verified, authorizations are placed and funds are moved from one financial institution to another – and that’s only a brief summary. Cardholders and merchants each have very different views and responsibilities when it comes to using and accepting credit cards, but they have one important thing in common – the issuing bank.

When you use your credit card, your thoughts are probably focused on things like your current available balance and the APR on your account. These and other details of your account are set by the issuing bank of your credit card. That’s the bank that originated your card account, that lends you money to make purchases and the one that you send payment to each month. Some examples of large issuing banks are Bank of America and Citi Bank.

The businesses where you use your credit card to pay for products and services are also concerned about your issuing bank – but their thoughts are focused on something called the interchange reimbursement fee.

Issuing credit cards is a pretty profitable venture for banks that are large enough to handle the risks involved. On one side of the equation, they collect interest and other fees that are mainly a result of the APR on their cardholders’ accounts. On the other side of the equation, they collect interchange fees from the merchants that accept credit cards as payment from their cardholders.

If you’ve got a credit card you’re pretty familiar with interest rates and APR, but unless you’re also a business owner – you probably aren’t aware of interchange reimbursement fees and how they affect businesses.

Interchange rates are essentially the wholesale fees for Visa, MasterCard and Discover brand credit cards that a business must pay to a bank each time they accept a credit card issued by that bank. Interchange fees don’t apply to independent card brands like American Express – which I’ll talk more about later.

The stakeholders of Visa and MasterCard (which are primarily issuing banks) maintain something called an interchange reimbursement fee schedule that anyone can view by going to their respective websites (links below). These fee schedules dictate the percentage of a transaction that a business must pay to an issuing bank when they accept that bank’s credit card.

You’ll notice by looking at the interchange fee schedules that there are quite a few different categories – each of which can carry a percentage charge, a per transaction charge or both. This is done for a number of reasons that are beyond the scope of this article, but the fee is generally based on risk, a merchant’s processing behavior, or their business type.

Interchange is often quite confusing for merchants because there are so many different categories and reason why transactions fall under one category or another. It’s typical for merchants to have charges resulting from several different interchange categories in a single monthly billing period.

In addition to interchange fees, merchants also must pay assessments to Visa and MasterCard as well as a fee to their merchant service provider. With an average interchange charge of 2% and an assessment of 0.0925% imposed on each transaction, it’s no surprise that merchants spend plenty of time making sure that they have a cheap merchant account.

When comparing merchant accounts, business should look for either a flat rate merchant account or something called interchange plus pricing. Under this pricing model, a merchant service provider applies a fixed mark-up to the actual interchange charge as dictated by Visa or MasterCard. Interchange plus and flat rate pricing models are the best merchant account pricing structures a business can have for both cost-effectiveness and transparency.

Visa, MasterCard and Discover brand credit cards are referred to as bankcards because they’re backed by a number of actual banks. Brands that are wholly-owned and that are back by a single issuing (and acquiring) bank are called independent brands. Rising interchange fees for bankcards and large independents alike are creating opportunities in the marketplace for more independent brands to come up through the ranks – the latest of which is RevolutionCard.

Like the bankcard brands, independent brands dictate the charges that cardholders and merchants must pay to use and accept their cards. In the case of the largest independent card brand, American Express, a merchant generally pays a rate of about 2.5% per transaction to accept an American Express card as payment. American Express plays their cards (no pun intended) a little closer to their chest in terms of the rates and fees they charge.

Now that you have an idea of the costs associated with accepting credit cards, you can understand why many merchants impose minimums on credit card purchases, a convenience fee or other cost-mitigating strategies.

The most widely used practice among merchants to lessen the costs associated with accepting credit cards is to apply a minimum purchase amount to credit or debit card transactions. They do this to avoid losing money on transactions where the profit from the sale isn’t enough to cover the cost associated with processing it.

For example, let’s say you walk into a convenience store and a bottle of water for $1.59 and use your Visa card as a form of payment. The merchant’s cost for the bottle of water is $1.00, leaving them $0.59 gross profit. Of that let’s say that their operational costs total 50% of gross profits, leaving them with about $0.30 of NET profit in a typical transaction.

Since you’re paying with your credit card, the merchant will have to pay processing costs of roughly 2% for interchange, plus another 0.0925% for assessments, plus another roughly 1.75% and $0.20 for the merchant service provider’s fees. After processing fees, the merchant is left with less than $0.10 or just under a third of their initial NET profits.

To guard against this happening, some merchants place a minimum purchase amount on credit card sales, but doing so is against the agreement they signed with Visa and MasterCard. Merchants aren’t allowed to discriminate against cardholders for any reason – including the amount of a transaction. Businesses that are reported to Visa or MasterCard for violating their merchant service agreement may be fined, have their merchant accounts closed or both.

The next time that you’re in a store where you’re forced to a pay a minimum to use your credit card, consider a couple of options. You can pay cash for the transaction and be done with it. If you don’t have cash, you can point out to the merchant that they’re in violation of their agreement and ask for an exception. Lastly, you can threaten to report the merchant hoping that they’ll let you use your card for what is likely a purchase of less than $10.

Many merchants that get reprimanded for imposing minimums on credit card transactions are forced to raise their prices across the board for both cash and credit transactions. Keep that in mind before resorting to option number three above.

Resources

http://usa.visa.com/merchants/operations/interchange_rates.html
http://www.mastercard.com/us/merchant/support/interchange_rates.html

Reader Feedback on Citi's Customer Service

By: Mr Credit Card

10/29/2009

This is an email I just got from a reader telling about her bad experiences with Citi. I’ve decided to publish this for all to see. One of the things you realize is that credit cards are not just about rewards but customer service. If you wish to share any of your credit card experiences with us, please feel free to use our contact form.

You carry a good review for CitiCards programs, and while the initial agreement may be competitive and seem favorable to pursue, once you are in their program, that changes rather frequently and dramatically.

I transferred several balances about 2 years ago, and do not use a credit card on the account. I only pay down the debt. Every month, there’s a huge problem with on line payments and payment postings. Sometimes it’s a website down for maintenance on a due date, or a change in payment cut-off times. (I’ve seen 3 unannounced changes so far: midnight, 5:00PM, noon…you never know what you find on their website. I pay all my bills on supplier’s websites…they are not the norm of what you find on line.) Every month they either change payment dates or payment posting date and do not inform me.

Citicards no longer posts your payments the same day, even though my bank withdraws the funds immediately, and they have in the past. I have 2 other credit cards, nobody does this. Their website doesn’t disclose the delayed payment posting date. It varies between 3-5 days. Can you imagine the revenue they generate from this float and subsequent late charges and increased interest rates? With all the new consumer credit laws, this feels very unethical and nearly illegal.

This is fairly new, last 2-3 months, and they don’t inform you of the changes. My payment confirmation shows payment date, and no information about float on the payment posting. So now, if I log on before noon to pay the bill on the due date, they add late charges (in the category that never gets a payment posted against it), and bump up the interest rate. If it was discolosed on the statement and/or website, or if a notice was sent out describing the change, I could have avoided the significant rate increase and late charges, and better understood their new policy…absolutely nothing from them arrived by mail, email, or webiste information.

Also, I opted out of a rate increase this Spring. I did it by phone – it was an option of notification – I know date and who I spoke with. Their notice was ridiculous, there was no “important handling needed by ___date”, it purposely looked like junk mail that could easily be overlooked and thrown away. They will not roll the rate back…my interest rate has now tripled. I am working through customer service…they are a substandard “joke” to deal with.

Every month there are new payment due dates, new (undisclosed) rule changes, and later postings.

They have frustrated me beyond belief, and if I ever heard of a class action suit against them, or a way to sue them individually, I would jump all over it.

Prospective clients considering their accounts should be strongly warned about their payment practices, and lack of capability in customer service and documentation. Any opportunity to steer people away from this credit company is strongly suggested.

Ms. Susan Guffey

Reward Travel Bloggers To The Rescue

By: Jason Steele

10/27/2009

Travel and credit card bloggers are great sources of information when researching and planning your next trip. We have a wealth of information that has been acquired through hundereds of hours of research and a lifetime of experience. Sometimes, people need assistance with a specific situation that goes beyond a mere blog posting.

Recently, two highly respected travel bloggers have taken up the challenge of helping individual travelers navigate the often confusing world of airline travel and rewards.

Help With Award Reservations

So you have earned gazillions of miles on your credit card, and now you are actually trying to redeem them for an award. It might be easier to go to law school than to figure out all of the rules and restrictions preventing you from redeeming an award seat. Then you have the tangled web of airline partnerships and alliances that can be utilized for redeeming awards. Fortunately, View From The Wing blogger Gary Leff has begun offering a Frequent Flier Award Booking Service. Gary will research itineraries, find award seats, facilitate award transfers, and even work directly with the airline. Using his service, it is possible to book business or first class seats worth tens of thousands of dollars that you may otherwise may not have found.

The Cranky Concierge

Brett Snyder over at the Cranky Flier Blog is a self described “airline dork” who has worked in scheduling at one of the major airlines. Regular readers may even recall that we exchanged guest posts last year. Recently Brett has launched a service called The Cranky Concierge. This innovative offering is designed to assist the rest of the non-airline dorks out there in completing their travel plans with with a minimum of stress and hassle. For a flat fee, he and his staff will help you find low fares, monitor the progress of your flights, provide delay and cancellation assistance, and post-dispute trip assistance.

As a fellow airline-dork, even I have to admit that there are time that I could have used this service. I have been stuck in airports without accurate information about weather, alternative flights, and airline policies. I have booked complicated itineraries that have come unraveled due to weather or mechanical delays. Finally, I have spent months after my trip hounding airlines for compensation. For those without and encyclopedic knowledge of airlines as well as those who value their time, this unique service could be a godsend.

Get Help From A Blogger

If you find yourself perplexed by all of the award travel redemption terms and conditions, or unable to navigate the airline bureaucracy while traveling, it may be time to enlist the services of these highly respected bloggers. Even savvy travelers may wish to utilize these services on once in a lifetime trips such as their honeymoon. Gary’s award redemption service can mean the difference between paying for your ticket and flying for free, or between a coach award and a business class award. Brett’s concierge service can mean the difference between sleeping on the floor at an airport and reaching your destination. Travel insurance may only provide compensation after there are problems, yet these services can solve problems before they happen. I believe that Brett and Gary are the pioneers of a whole new niche in the travel industry.

Customer Service and Loyalty

By: Mr Credit Card

10/26/2009

We all know that once in a while, a product we breaks down or we get treated badly by customer service. At what point do you sever an economic relationship? Well, judging from the amount of comments I get in this post and the emails that I get, it looks like many folks will be ditching their credit card relationships. But today, I just want to rant about other products areas where I have either loved and been loyal or have or am in the process of severing my economic relationships.

Cars – I have not had a bad experience with my car at all. Throughout my life, I’ve had a Toyota Corolla and 2 Lexus. However, I have had so many friends who swore never to a car from a particular brand again. For example, I had a friend with a LandRover and the remote control simply does not work. “Never a land rover” was what he said to me. Or another friend who had a Ford and the engine broke down after a couple of years (just outside the warranty period) and Ford is giving them a hard time about fixing it.

My positive experience comes from having cars that hardly breaks down and a wonderful experience when I send my car for servicing. This is not to say I would not try another brand for my next car. But the comparison will always be with Toyota (for me at least).

Computers – For years, I’ve simply bought a HP computer everything time the old one has had it’s good days. But I had one experience with HP that has made me reconsider about my future computer purchases. There was something wrong and when I tried to call HP, I was put on hold for ages. I asked them to send me a reboot disk and they claimed my computer was no longer in warranty and that I had to pay for it. They also said that I should have gotten it but Best Buy did not give me any.

What bugs me is that there are so many pre-installed programs on my computer that I simply hate it. So my next computer is either going to be a custom made one or the Mac Pro from Apple. If you a custom made computer, you can be assured of better customer service than the big box manufacturers. Same goes with Apple.

Credit Cards – So far, I’ve had none of the bad experiences in credit cards that other users have. I’ve paid my bills fully every month and on time (except on a couple of occasions when I thought the autopay function was working and it was not!). But other folks are not so fortunate. Many folks have had 20 years relationship with their credit card companies, paid on time, but credit card issuers in this credit crisis have reduced credit limits, increased interest rates and closed accounts. There are many unhappy campers out there. But who to turn to? Everyone of these companies and guilty to a certain degree!

So far, my main cards have been Amex and my positive experience with them was really due to the numerous times they have helped me out on various matters. Their customer service has been great. I listed various examples in my review of the Amex Platinum Card.

Bank Accounts – A friend of mine just recently had to go through the hassle of proving she had “a certain amount in her TD bank account” after their computer system screw up fiasco. I can tell you for sure that she ain’t going to bank with them again. Things like that really pisses off customers. I have a banking account with Bank of America (who have got so many bad press). But the folks in the branch know me and my wife and are super friendly. So unless drastic happens, my bank account stays with them.

Interestingly, some banks have actually closed or changed names and resurfaced. GMAC Bank (bank of the financing arm of GM) used to offer high rates to attract deposits (there was a reason though as their credit rating was crap and they need to pay up!). Well, since good old GM was taken over by Uncle Sam, they have now changed names to Ally Bank (ex GMAC Bank!). Will you still bank with them?

My webhost – I have been through a couple of web host for hosting this site. But the last one was a unpleasant experience. I had a web design person (who I later became good friends with) switch me to a host that she was a reseller (which worked fine for me back in 2006). Problem was that when things messed up, I had to call her. I may not reach her immediately but she normally got things fixed. Then earlier this year, the host just told her he did not want my business any more because I was using up too much bandwidth! He did not even want to charge me more per month but gave me a week or two to switch host. You can imagine what a nightmare that must be!

I finally bit the bullet and switched to rackspace, who is one of the premier dedicated server host around. I chose to go with the cloud host that costs me $100 a month. But, in return, I get 24/7 customer service. I have called them on Sundays and there is always someone on the line to help me. This, I’m willing to pay.

Common Thread – I think the common thread here is that I value customer service a lot. I like it when I am able to reach a person by phone. And I do not mind paying for it if it means a lot to me. Firms that do not place an importance on customer service eventually lose my business. How is it for you?

CitiBank Closes Shell Credit Card Accounts

By: Mr Credit Card

10/24/2009

There were various news reports out in the mainstream press that Citibank has closed accounts on their Shell MasterCard. Apparantly, it started happening on Wednesday. Many cardholders claimed that they never received any letters in advance and found out when they actually tried to use the card.

Citi also confirmed in a statement issued saying they did close accounts of “co-branded gas cards” like Shell, Philips Conoco and Exxon Mobil. If you read the comments in these posts on the mainstream media, a couple of things become very clear.

Many of these accounts have good credit and even paid their bills in full

After much probing, a couple of Citi supervisors did admit that the account was closed because it was not profitable.

Here’s my take on why Citi is doing this. They are IMO closing accounts that are not profitable. How so? Most of these co-branded credit cards like Shell Mastercard pay 5% rebates when you gasoline from Shell. These cards do not have any annual fee. Now, I bet that many cardholders simply use their cards for Shell gasoline, charge a couple of hundred dollars a month and even pay in full. Some have even been customers for 20 years. But if Citi has to pay out 5% rebates but can only earn less than that on merchant fees, then that becomes a losing proposition for them.

That is the reason many gas credit cards have reduced their rebates. For example, the Discover Gas Card no longer pays 5% rebates on gas. They have reduced that to 2% and they put an annual gasoline spending cap on that. Amex Costco have also put annual spending caps. Chase Freedom went from 5% gasoline, supermarket and drugstore rebates to 3% rebates on “rotating categories”. Fact of the matter is that the good old days of straight up 5% cash rebate cards with no tiers or caps are over.

Citi may still be accepting application on their Shell MasterCard. I just checked their website and they are still offering 5% rebates on Shell gasoline purchases. But I’m willing to bet that if any new cardholders simply uses the card just for gas to earn the 5% rebates, they get their account closed as well!

If your Shell card has been closed, please share your story and opinion.

Why I Collect Miles

By: Jason Steele

10/23/2009

I spend a lot of time reading and writing about credit cards and loyalty programs. Some times I wonder if I have been spending too much time. This week, I am watching it all pay off.

Time For Barbecue

First, I booked an award flight on Southwest airlines to Austin Texas. Sure, I only had one free ticket for my family of three, the other two were paid. We will be going on President’s Day weekend in February, which strikes me as great time to be somewhere warmer than in Denver. The slopes are also way too crowded that weekend as well. I am looking forward to sampling the world famous food on the Austin-San Antonio barbecue trail, as well as some Tex-Mex for variety. The actual value was a mere $75, perhaps not the best use of the miles, but have you had Texas barbecue?

Free Tickets To The Caribbean

Next, I booked three tickets from Denver to St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands for next May using some American Airlines Miles. The coach price for the seats would have been $600 each, first class would have been $1,800 each. We chose first class since it was a longer flight with connections. We also do not have to pay bag fees, which would have been necessary for our scuba equipment. Kudos to American Airlines for having a reasonable number of seats at the “saaver” award level. In the past, booking 7 months in advance would have been easy, but it no longer is on most airlines. Boo to American for making us stop in both Puerto Rico and Miami on the way back to avoid an prohibited “stopover” of more than 4 hours in Miami until the next flight. I will follow up with them to see if they will make an exception, but I am not holding my breath.

Super Seats Across The Ocean

What put me in a really good mood yesterday was when I checked my Delta itinerary for my “falafel run” to Tel Aviv coming up on Christmas. Regular readers will recall that I had gotten these tickets in large part due obtaining Delta Amex credit cards after a Delta promotion that was subsequently withdrawn. Later, I got in a small conflict with Delta after they repeatedly rescheduled my flights. Since that was resolved, I have been rechecking my reservation periodically. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the aircraft on my ATL-TLV flight and my return were both changed to the 777LR. For those of you who are airline geeks, you will recognize that this is the longest range commercial aircraft in the world, and the flagship of the Delta fleet. You don’t have to be an aviation expert to appreciate the new, lie flat seats that Delta has installed in these newer 777 aircraft. Here are some photos of the new aircraft and the business class seat. Here is a picture of the old style for comparison. The flight from Tel Aviv to Atlanta will be the longest flight I have ever been on at over 13 hours against the wind.

A Movie About Miles

Later this year, a new movie called Up In The Air is coming out about the pursuit of frequent flier miles. This is a major release starring George Clooney and Jason Bateman. For me, accumulating miles is not something I really am able to do through travel, as I no longer have a day job that allows me to do so. Accumulating miles is also not about gaining status or hoarding points. This week, I actually made several reservation that will put those miles to use, and I can’t wait to be “Up In The Air” myself.

Even Sub Prime Credit Card Issuers Are Closing Accounts!

By: Mr Credit Card

Just when you thought the likes of Chase, BOA or any of the big boys in the credit card world were jacking up rates, cutting credit lines and forcing many cardholders to turn to apply for sub prime cards (cos their credit have become subprime), here’s some emails to me demonstrating that even the sub prime issuers have gotten into the act. Here’s a few emails we got from our readers.

i had a tribute card for a year never late /i would like card like that if i can/they clse down is it any way i can get a card from delware bank

mrs rubye amos

I had a credit card from First Bank of Delaware (Imagine Card). They transferred my card to thier Tribute card because of “my good payment and usage history”. I just got a letter from Tribute card that the FBoD has closed my account. When I called the number on the letter, FBoD has decided to terminate their credit card program but “it has no reflection of my account, credidt or history”. Now it shows on my credit as “closed by bank”. What do I do now?? I am still responsible for my balance, which admittedly is low but it puts a black mark on my credit…any advice??

Dana Madera

tribute credit card or first bank of deleware has cancelled all of their customers accounts. Are they allowed to do this? not everyone was giving notice of the cancellation, some of us received credit increases just days before this happened. they did not give any notice that this was going to happen at all.

Is a class action lawsuit the way to go for the customers?

t smith

I had a Tribute Bank credit card with $850.00 credit limit. They gave me an increase and about 2 months late I went to purchase something with it and was told the card was declined. I then called Tribute and they told me that the account was closed because they were no longer doing Master Card. What do u suggest I do. I also want to know what it means when it says you have a 25 day grace period. Grace period for what? I don’t understand that.

Ms Cheryl Horn

I had a tribute master card and the limit was $600.00 This took three year to come up to this I was never late in any payment. After I payed off my balance they drop my limit to $225.00 You pay the off the fees and have as you state $180.00 credit limit remaining I had this card almost three years and they close the account on me why. Could you please explain what happen to me.

Rick Stewart

My thoughts – What can I say? Even Compucredit, the firm behind Tribute and Imagine credit card have gotten into the act. I guess their credit card default rate must be creeping up and that all the extra layer of fees they charge is not enough to compensate for that. What can you do if your card was canceled by them? Well, I would make sure all the fees and interest are paid off. If you have this card, chances are that you did not have great credit to begin with. If your credit is still poor, I would suggest getting a secured credit card instead because it is cheaper that all these cards and you almost face no risk in getting your credit lines declined because it is a secured card.

If your credit has improved, you could certainly try to apply for a regular unsecured credit card. I would not worry too much about the impact on your credit score if these accounts are closed because most will not have high limits or a lengthy credit history with these cards.

Please share your story if your account has been closed by one of these issuers.