June 5th, 2009 | Posted in Small Business Credit Card
Small business credit cards will save you a fortune..
In time and money as well! We all know time is money right? Well saving those precious minutes, hours and seconds is exactly what small business credit cards can do for you. In addition to this small business credit cards supply much better benefits than regular credit cards, making sure more money stays in your pocket.
The IRS demands that you separate personal expenses from business expenses. Now, you can see that using different credit cards for personal and business makes perfect sense right? Now that you think about it I guess it might even feel obvious.
Instead of plowing through hundreds of lines of different purchases and singling out which is which, simply get two completely different reports. They will be completely separated and you will have two different, separate bank accounts.
Even if you do not own a small business, a small business card should be used when traveling for your company, or making purchases on behalf of your employer online.
But what’s different about having one small business credit card and one regular?
The main purpose of having a small business credit card is to save money. They offer neat benefits such as lower annual percentage rates, larger credit lines than normal and last but not least the incredibly convenient prolonged grace period.
How does this save you money? Well, you pay less, you can keep the debt without debt increase for a longer period of time, and you pay less interest when you finally have to.
It’s not that easy.
Although it sounds easy, it’s not the effort equivalent of taking a step, or clicking a single link. Acquiring the perfect small business credit card is the tricky part of the solution, of course learning about the cards themselves are not exactly half the way.
There are many ways to start searching for the right credit card. Google, or use your favorite search engine, and search for the term “small business credit cards”. Slowly work your way through each and every of the significant looking results, separate the honest from the self serving recommendations, check each and every feature and benefit of the different programs and calculate what works best for you.
Or, you can quickly find out what people recommend, check the numbers of those major and/or minor credit card providers, quickly find out which would be best for you, verify that their service is on the right side of the law and that their licenses and other legal information is correct.
One quick step on the road to complete 100% verification of the legibility of the credit card provider, is to simply search for “[credit card provider] complaint” or “[credit card provider] is a scam”. If there are many recommendations and there are signs that it has been around for quite some time, you can proceed.
But make sure you proceed with caution, if anything causes you to be the least bit suspicious, search harder, ask other people, check databases that store complaints and confirmed scams for the provider’s name. Only when you are completely sure proceed, order the credit card and prepare for a lifetime of savings, in time and money.
May 31st, 2009 | Posted in Credit Card Companies
Being a Credit Card topic researcher, I noticed I high trend in searches related to “HSBC Credit Cards” and “Orchard Bank Credit Cards”. So I went to their website and checked out their credit card offers, nothing special there. I also checked google for news on the subjects at hand, nothing there. It was bugging me why all of sudden a 400% increase in searches for this semi Okay credit card. I finally figured it out people were searching for these credit cards to file complaints. Here is some of the stuff I found out about these Credit cards from Hell.
* Name variations Orchard Bank, HSBC (Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation), Household Bank. This bank is a worldwide corporation established in 86 countries.
* Collection notices to people whom never even applied for Credit Cards
* Jacking up interest rates without prior notifications
* Calling customers at home and work 10-12 times a day, about payments only a couple days late
* People mailing in payments 2 weeks in advance, and still getting late fees, on top of interest hikes, and damage to credit reports.
* It seams there is also a $61 fee to close an account paid in full
*Sending out statements 2 days before due date
* Sales calls from people with foreign accents for insurance policies, that you get charged for whether you want them or not, you wind up getting billed, without ever seeing documents or notices regarding the existence of such policies.
*This is the worst yet, lowering credit lines of people carrying balances making the balance over the limit, then accruing over the limit charges, jacking up interest rates, and finally sending bad reports to credit report agencies.
Most people will say this is due to the credit card reform bill coming up in 2010, but from I can tell reports like these about HSBC or whatever they want to call themselves, have been going on for years. I think that they recently have gone a little wackier due to the reform scare.
I would like to note that this not happening to a small amount of HSBC consumers but the majority.
Proof that I am not exaggerating about “HSBC Credit Cards aka Orchard Bank Credit Cards being straight from Hell”
Checkout some of these resources
This consumer was so urked about treatment from HSBC, he created a whole website about how they suck complete with a forum. There is also great information about where to complain.
There are currently 760 complaints filed under HSBC, 240 More Under Household Bank, another 280 complaints under Orchard Bank
A consumers account of a phone call with HSBC regarding rates jacked to 30%
There are yet another 1000 complaints about HSBC.
June 1st 2009 a couple more updates
Beneficial Bank is also owned by HSBC, Although their main Beneficial website is now closed. Consumer Affairs are getting recent complaints about Beneficial Bank / HSBC
May 25th, 2009 | Posted in Instant Approval Credit Cards
The term “Instant Approval Credit Cards’” is loosely used by credit card companies in many cases, ” Instant Approval” can mean within hours to a week or longer. And even if you are approved within hours your credit line may not be available until a further date. Please take the time to read the terms of service located on the credit card application page.
In many cases consumer fall into the trap of filling out to many “Instant Aproval” credit card applications be cause they did not realize that Instant approval was not Instant. The result could be too many hits on your credit report making the lender suspicious and not giving you any credit.
It is not uncommon in todays credit world, for creditors to ask for a fax of your pay check stub, or W2 forms, further delaying getting that actual credit
May 13th, 2009 | Posted in Money Back Credit Card
Not all money back credit cards are created equally. To find the best money back credit card for you, start buy getting a grip on the the way you spend your money. Do you put allot of mileage on your vehicle? If so, then you may save more money by using a gas rewards cards. Or, Do you travel allot? Maybe then you would need a travel card. Most people need credit cards for day to day purchases.
Okay, now that you have an idea where you spend most of your money, now it is time to start comparing cards. Here is something you may not know. Credit card companies require advertisers to use certain wording that does not tell you the whole story about the savings offer. For example “Earn up to 5% Money back on every day purchases”. What they do not tell you is that you have to charge $6,500 on your credit card first, and /or the money back is only good for purchases at a certain store.
So the next thing you need to do is to look at the money back credit card applications and somewhere on the bottom of the application will be a link that says “Terms of Service”. Click on link to find out the finer details of how that particular money back credit card works.
Now you know how to find the money back credit card that can save you the most money, let’s talk about how to maximize your savings. The nature of money back cards is to get you to put more on your card instead of using your banking account. With that in mind, the credit card company wants you to screw up and make a late payment, or not pay off your credit card every month. They want to charge you late fees, take away your money back earnings, and jack up your interest rates. To beat the system, you must be diligent buy not over spending, and pay your bill in its entirety every month. If you do not pay off the bill of every month, you will incur apr charges and eat up any money back savings you may have had.
Getting money back from a credit card is not easy but it can be done. As a matter of fact you can earn yourself a few hundred extra bucks a year exploiting savings if you remain focused.
October 13th, 2008 | Posted in Credit Card Tips, Tricks, and Trivia
I would like to take a moment to explain what Credit Card rolling is. Credit Card rolling is when you incur debt on one credit card and want to transfer a balance to another credit card.
So will Credit Card Rolling hurt my Credit Score? Temporarily, the answer is yes, but only by a couple of points in the long term, no. It my take 1 to 6 months to show the original card paid in full, plus a credit check inquiry and balance for the new credit card. It really depends on how fast a credit card company reports to the scoring agencies. After 6 months your credit history will look better than it did previously. If you are not in the market for a loan, for a new car or house, it is perfectly okay to roll your Credit Cards.
The hidden danger in Credit Card rolling is adding balance on top of your transfer. It works like this; Lets say you transfer $10,000 at 0% for 12 months, then you go Christmas Shopping and add another $1000 on top of that at 5%. Lets say you pay $100 a month on this same card. What happens is this; you are paying on your new debt, and at the end of the year your 0% will be barely paid on.
If you transfer a balance the first thing to consider is whether or not there is a hidden transaction fee, from either card. And the next thing to consider, is whether to keep your old card or get a new credit card to put additional spending on.
