Customer interest in 79.9% credit card is 'phenomenal'

[TwixVoy]

"The company offering the sky-high-interest-rate card to consumers with poor credit says the response has been great."

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/SmartSpending/default.aspx?feat=1516489

[Nikki Stone1]

1. Oh. Dear. God.

Sigh.

[Ikonoklast]

2. I hope ten million people bang out the limit on that card

and default all in the same month.

[leftstreet]

5. Right on!

:thumbsup:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. They probably appeal to the same crowd that swallows the line

"For just $25 a week, you can own a computer."

[salin]

9. Many years ago when I was doing some basic (ala not fancy) furniture shopping

the sales person was telling me about some of the "deals" per 'nothing down for x number of months'. When the interest rates were described (after the pitch of how little a month it would cost)... and how long one would pay and calculating how much over the selling price it would cost, I was a bit aghast.

Our society is pretty illiterate per home finances. When it was described (how much more one pays in the end), it was hard to believe that any one would agree to those conditions (rather than put that much aside each month, and much sooner than one would 'pay off' on the 'credit' conditions. Until one realizes how many questions I had to ask to get the person to detail that info.

Am guessing that crowd (that goes for the $25 a week computer), is much larger than we would like to admit.

Side note: hope you survived the storms okay. I had a number of friend in Wisconsin postpone travel trips to Indiana due to the storms.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. Oh yes, I was fine--I didn't travel more than five miles the whole time

:hi:

[salin]

11. Glad to hear...

that you weathered the storm! :hi:

[dixiegrrrrl]

4. If you need to establish credit and will carry NO balances

monthly rates are meaningless.
Of course, we know the CC card companies are just hoping and wishing that you carry even a teeny balance just once. That's all it would take to start the perpetual debt game.

[roamer65]

6. I agree. That's the only reason people would sign up for this card.

Just to re-establish credit by showing monthly on-time payments.

[salin]

7. Sadly, with the poor teaching (or just missing) teaching of financial literacy

I have to wonder what the percentage of folks signing up are that intentional/disciplined. I doubt that those pushing the cards are terribly upfront about what it means if one doesn't pay it off right away (per nearly double cost of purchases, if it isn't paid off quite quickly.)

[WeDidIt]

14. I bet there's still a fee with this one

and I bet the interest starts day one of the charge, too.

[backscatter712]

8. It's like a payday loan on a card!

Makes usury easy and convenient!

[NNN0LHI]

12. More like a mob loan shark who doesn't break your legs if you miss a payment

They destroy your credit history which in the long run is probably worse.

Don

[L0oniX]

13. Why 79.9%? Did they pull that figure out of their ass? I mean why not make it 100%?

You can get cc's for with a much lower rate than 79.9 even if you have a bankruptcy. Most of the fix your credit/start over cards offer a deal for a yearly fee and 18-22% ...or are those all gone now? My wife just got another 18% card with no yearly fee and she went through a bankruptcy 2 years ago. Clearly the 79% cc is for the most foolish of people.

[WeDidIt]

15. I bet it's as high as is legally possible

thanks to the Bush Admin.

[rantormusing]

16. AS long as they don't cry

When they don't get paid

[varelse]

17. Phenomenal = "2% of people receiving the offers have applied for the cards"

Premier hasn’t said how many applications were distributed, but CreditCards.com reports:

(Miles Beacom, CEO of Premier Bankcard) called the response "phenomenal," adding 2% of people receiving the offers have applied for the cards. Their normal response rate is 1% to 1.2%, he says. "It's double what our normal product was."

[Ikonoklast]

18. He didn't mention that their 'normal product' involved

selling steaming piles of crap.

[varelse]

19. The phenomenal success rate must be due to the fact that this is a

deluxe steaming pile with extra, bonus crap. :shrug:

[Silent3]

21. For a direct mail sales pitch, 2% IS a good response rate.

A huge amount of junk mail is never even opened, it just goes straight from mail box to trash can.

If you send out 100 pieces of junk mail, and manage to get 2 people among 100 recipients who get through all of the steps of actually bothering to open the mail, looking it over to see what the mail is about, dropping their suspicions that they're dealing with some kind of scam, filling in a form, putting that form back into a return envelope, and dropping that envelope back into a mail box, you're doing quite well as far as the world of direct mail is concerned.

[spanone]

20. like offering nooses to people on suicide watch