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If it’s your first time to apply for a credit card, be careful with accepting any unsolicited offer that comes your way. If you don’t take care, you just might find yourself a victim of credit card fraud.

5 Tips on Wising Up to Fraudulent Credit Card Offers

Tip #1 Apply Directly to the Credit Card Issuer.
You might find yourself encountering an offer that says you’ll have an easier time applying and getting approved for a credit card through their help. Unless they work directly for the credit card issuer, no middleman representative or company can change your credit card application’s fate if it’s truly not meant to pass. The only thing that can improve your chances of getting approved is by improving your credit score and nothing else!

Tip #2 Bad Credit Matters…Negatively.
If someone tells you that he can get you a credit card that’s not only unsecured but with low interest rates as well, you’re getting your leg pulled by a con artist. Bad credit always matters, and they matter negatively. Credit card issuers never ignore the fact that you have bad credit no matter who you are. If you have bad credit but you want to have a credit card, your best bet is getting a secured one or one that’s specifically designed for people with bad credit.

Tip #3 There is No Up Front Fee to Pay.
And if there is, it should be minimal because there’s really nothing you should pay for. Up front fees are rarely required by any major credit card issuer so being asked to do so in the first place should make warning bells ring in your head. Secondly, if they refer to the up front fee as your “annual fee”, it should appear on your first credit card statement and paid together with your initial credit card charge.
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Credit card companies are getting out of their ways to be ahead of the competition. A lot of incentives which are truly enticing are being offered. With this stiff competition going on, better deals are available for consumers. However, you should still give it careful thought and consideration before committing to one credit card.

The annual percent rate or APR is the most widely used in credit card marketing strategies. Essentially, APR determines how much interest a credit card user needs to pay given a certain principal amount. The lower the APR, the better the deal is. Some companies may even offer 0% APR which means that borrowers only need to pay for the amount they actually borrowed.

This is definitely too good to be true. Banks are not charitable institutions but are for-profit organizations. They would definitely compensate for loss profits brought about by 0% APR in some other ways.

Usually these ways are hidden behind the fine print. Without reading and fully understanding every terms and conditions associated with signing up for a 0% APR credit card, a customer might get into financial trouble. The law only specifies that all fees and other terms and conditions be posted for customer’s information. It does not require banks to print these in larger letters.

These 0% APR offers are actually just plain marketing strategies, They don’t last very long – usually only for 90days to about a year. And when that introductory period is over, high APR charges would start to apply on your purchases. These would definitely lose you the money you had saved during the 0% APR period.

Also, when you try to read the fine print, you’ll find out that most of these 0% APR offers may not apply to balance transfers. That means, in order for you to take advantage of this limited offer, you would have to make new purchases using your new card. This condition might be okay for those who are new credit card holders and don’t have existing credit card balances from other banks. However, for most of us who are looking for ways to minimize the interest rates charged on our credit card balances, this condition does not sound good especially if we find out all about it after we have signed up for the card.
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