Credit Card Annual Fees Are a Rip-off!

Stores are never nice to people. They're nice to credit cards.

J.F. Lawton

I recently made a rare, in-person visit to my financial institution and they were promoting some new credit cards. There was a big sign saying that if you signed up today, they would wave the annual fee for one year. Quite frankly, the whole concept of an annual fee offends me; it’s just another way to rip off consumers.

Credit card companies are already gouging you. They’ve made an art of collecting fees:

Merchant fees: When merchants accept a payment via credit card they have to pay a percentage of the transaction amount as a fee to the credit card company.

Consumer fees: Annual fees for the pleasure of using your credit card, outrageous interest fees for not paying your balance in full every month, cash advance fees, balance transfer fees…

Sale of customer data: Yes, some credit card actually companies sell their customers’ data to other businesses. This data is a goldmine of consumer spending habits.

Why on earth would I pay an annual fee to use a credit card? The credit card companies should pay me to use their cards. I have a MasterCard and a Visa with no annual fees that suit me just fine. Waving an annual fee for one year so that you can rip me off annually after that, is not in my future. How many credit cards are you paying an annual fee for? And why exactly are you doing that?

Life was a lot simpler when what we honored was father and mother rather than all major credit cards.

Robert Orben

Make someone smile today.

Geri