Briareos H on 1/9/2009 at 08:11
What us Euros call a credit card is hardly one in the same sense as the Yanks'.
Our VISAs and Mastercards here are debit cards with a few convenience options : money is withdrawn immediately or deffered from the bank account but for sums under, say, 500€ the bank servers don't have to be contacted to accept the transaction. The amount is directly charged with no interest (obviously) later on, or the next day.
The "credit" in the name comes into action when the bank account isn't provisioned enough to make a transaction that was pre-authorized. You have to regularize the negative balance in a given amount of time (generally two weeks) before any interest rate starts to appear. Failure to regularize within a month generally induces blocking of the card.
A rather fair system if you ask me.
SubJeff on 1/9/2009 at 10:02
No, no, no.
We have debit AND credit cards. Yes you can have Visa debit cards but we also have credit cards in the same way as everyone else.
SD on 1/9/2009 at 10:04
Quote Posted by Aja
I added a helpful "credit card scams" tag so that if anyone's ever searching TTLG to see if we've had any discussions about credit card scams, they'd be sure to find this thread.
Frankly, anyone who is stupid enough to give out the 3 digit security number on the back of their card deserves to have every fucking penny drained from their account.
Briareos H on 1/9/2009 at 10:15
Quote Posted by Subjective Effect
No, no, no.
We have debit AND credit cards. Yes you can have Visa debit cards but we also have credit cards in the same way as everyone else.
I don't know where you live but in France, yes, yes, yes - thank you very much.
What we call credit cards are immediate/deferred debit cards.
True credit cards exist too, but no one uses them.
d0om on 1/9/2009 at 10:25
Yeah, I don't see the point of a credit card, so I only have a debit card.
If I want to borrow money I can ask my bank for a loan at ~4% APR, rather than paying the absurdly high rates on a credit card.
SD on 1/9/2009 at 10:40
Quote Posted by d0om
If I want to borrow money I can ask my bank for a loan at ~4% APR, rather than paying the absurdly high rates on a credit card.
Quote Posted by MoneySavingExpert
Credit cards used correctly are cheaper than loans. Therefore if you need to make a planned purchase, have worked out your repayments, and what you can afford to repay, it's by far the cheapest way.
You can now get credit cards that are 0% interest rated for the first year. Hardly stratospheric, that.
SubJeff on 1/9/2009 at 10:44
Quote Posted by Briareos H
I don't know where you live but in France, yes, yes, yes - thank you very much.
What we call credit cards are immediate/deferred debit cards.
True credit cards exist too, but no one uses them.
What we call vavoombabas are actually cars.
ffs, you know what I mean.
Starrfall on 1/9/2009 at 14:47
You can also get some extra benefits out of credit card rewards if you pick the right ones. Like if you fly a lot and have a preferred airline, using their card (it seems like every airline in the US has their own card, and sometimes more than one) to pay for flights and nothing else is a good way to rack up benefits without any real extra costs to you. The trick is just making sure it pays off in the long run.
People do this for things like (
https://www.citibank.com/us/cards/shell/index.jsp) gas too: you were already buying gas on a regular basis, why not get 30 cents/gallon back as a bonus with cash back on a bunch of other stuff?
(the catch is probably that you probably have to already have good credit to get the really good benefits or something like that)
Starrfall on 1/9/2009 at 20:22
Hahahahahahaha I wonder which of the 13 designs gets the best reactions from checkout clerks.
