Dirty Tricks Credit Card Companies Play

Credit card companies make billions of dollars each year in legitimate interest charges and card holder fees, but are generally under constant pressure from the shareholders to increase their share holder earnings. To make the extra money for the shareholders the credit card companies sometime adopt some dirty tricks to make this profit. The credit card industry is becoming more competitive and less money is being earned from each client card holder from the interest charges these credit card holders produce and the number of dirty tricks used start to increase. If you are a credit card holder then you need to protect yourself against these unscrupulous procedures that literally steal your hard earned money.

We will list 10 of the most common dirty tricks credit card companies play on their clients. Of course there are far more than just 10 dirty tricks that credit card companies play on their client base but knowing the most commonly used dirty tricks will help you not to become a victim yourself.

The first dirty trick credit card companies just love to play on credit card users is also the worst one of them all. Credit card companies purposely do not post your payment the day it was received by them. This is the oldest most commonly known and used trick deployed on credit card payments. The credit card company receives credit card payment on time but it does not process the credit card payment immediately ... they purposely process the credit card payments very slowly. The credit card companies will purposely delay the receiving payment date in order to cause the credit card payment to incur an applicable late payment charge fee by processing the payment beyond the payment due date. The policies of many credit card companies support a "receiving process time period clause" that is generally written not to benefit the credit card holder, but to benefit the credit card company themselves.

A second common trick is to make the credit card holders monthly payment date late by changing the due date for the credit card payment. If the credit card payment is late the credit card company will charge a late payment fee and if the situation repeats itself consecutively for few months in a row they can legally increase the credit card balance interest rate because the credit card holder has now become a liability risk in future payments and they are then justified in increasing the interest rate legally.

The third most commonly used trick played by the credit card companies is an extremely shameful one. A credit card holder can actually be charged a penalty fee merely by not using the credit card for a designated period of time.

The fourth trick played is associated with credit card holders sense of security.  One of them is protecting you in the event your credit card is stolen, lost or used fraudulently. Almost all credit card companies DO NOT charge a fee for this service, but there are others that do. Read the fine print.

The fifth trick played is the credit card protection fee for protecting you in the event that you loose your job or lord forbid, die. For this form of credit card protection the fees are generally too high for the benefit the credit card holder will actually receive, but many customers purchase this protection solely out of fear and thinking that it is a good policy. We strongly recommend your seek qualified legal council for injury and death protection needs.

The sixth trick is designed to work on the psychological mind set theory. The credit card company arbitrarily increases your credit line limit without your requesting an increased spending limit. The credit card companies do this in hopes and anticipation that the credit card holder will actually spend more money. This is a well know "human compulsive behavior"  psychological trick intended solely to assist you in spending more money on your credit card,  hopefully placing you deeper into their debt.

The seventh trick is another bad surprise for credit card holders. A credit card holder will come back from a vacation or trip and find out that they have actually been charged more for the credit card amounts spent during the foreign country trips. The commission fee's charged for the dollar amount spent outside the United States or other countries credit card holders reside in are much higher interest rates than the usual percentage rate that the credit card holder is accustomed too.

The eighth trick is a rather new trick credit card companies deploy is the credit card cancellation fee process. Many credit card company bank providers have adopted a policy of charging a fee for activating or closing a credit card account. This practice was also adopted by many other financial lender companies in addition.

There are also other scams like penalization for maintaining a high credit card balance or charging credit card insurance fees based on account levels.

It is important to know these standard credit card company tricks so that you don't become a victim.