Technobabble

Time for a New Credit Card?

Posted by on Aug 6, 2008 | 6 Comments

New credit card offers dominate the deluge of direct marketing material that lands in our real world mailboxes. Around these parts, the never ending stream of pieces hawking plastic piles up on the counter until I have the chance to sort things into one of the two most appropriate places … The new credit card fluff goes into recycling bin, while the personalized sheets head straight for the crosscut shredder.

There’s no question that new credit card campaigns play a huge part of the economy. While some folks might deride the effort as being harmful to the environment, I’d like to think that it’s not all that bad when folks deal with the paperwork in the proper manner and the credit card companies use recycled paper.

There was a land mine amongst our deluge of new credit card offers yesterday. It was one of those seemingly innocuous flat folded sheets that blends in with the pile. “Important Information About Your Account,” it read (or something of the sort) in 12 point bold caps above the address.

It should have been printed in bright red 72 point ultra bold, “Hey Loser, We’re About to Blast Your Interest Rate into the Stratosphere!”

Once my initial shock and anger passed, a steely resolve and a plan was formed. If all goes well, I’ll have that credit card paid off by January.

  • Tracy

    I’m in college and apparently credit card companies love college students because my friends and I get so many credit card offers in the mail. It’s enough paper to publish quite a few lengthy novels. What’s even worse it that I always get a paper jam in my shredder, when I attempt to dispose of these unwanted offers.

  • Keith

    Avoid Washington Mutual CC like the plague. This is the WORST rate-jacking outfit ever. I had an acct with them, made EVERY payment on-time and paid over the minimum. They “reviewed my credit” and increased my APR from 14.9% to 21.9%. 8 months later, they “reviewed my credit” again and said they would change my APR to 31.9% AND retroactively charge me back to Feb ’08. (4 months of 31.9% back-charges!) My only option was to cancel the acct, which I did with a certified return recipt letter so they couldn’t say they didn’t receive the letter by their dealine and charge me this crazy rate. My balance is down to $305 and should be paid in 2-3 weeks. I have other cards at 7.25, 8, 9, 13% so I’m an aware CC user. These clowns are for the birds.

    Good sites – debtsmart.com, creditboards.com

  • http://twitter.com/MastersonTrey Trey Masterson

    Either that TweetDeck, or Twitteriffic. Twitter’s official app is nice also. The paid Twitteriffic is probably the best overall. But that’s not free :D

  • http://twitter.com/mrpacs rob damiani

    Nope. I HAVE tried them all and the best one I can find is a toss up between Echofon and the Twitter APp itself with a slight nod to Echofon. I do like The Twitter app’s ability to quickly add “#” or “@” over Echofon. And it’s ability to quickly find and add a twitter name as you begin to type it.

  • http://www.twitter.com/khalmojo Khal Mojo

    I don’t own an iPhone but it may be relevant anyway since TweetDeck is TweetDeck (and I’m assuming it’s the same software on Android & iPhone)… the one absolutely single reason I use the TweetDeck mobile app is because it doesn’t have an arbitrary ~200 post limit. If I leave TweetDeck on my Android unchecked for a week, letting it collect all those updates, I can read them all without missing a beat nor feel it tug or slow down.

    I like the interfaces of the other apps better but this is the thing that breaks them for me. If HootSuite for iPhone doesn’t set a limit on tweets in a feed in memory, I’d approve… until then, there’s no way anyone’s going to pry TweetDeck off my phone.

  • http://iTechSpot.blogspot.com Aditya Chanana

    I prefer the official Twitter app because it simply rocks and sometimes I use Echofon.