Land, who considers himself a responsible citizen, took one company up on its suggestion that he pay for a vacation with its card - and took his family to Disneyworld. Consumers have grown tired of the tons of direct mail, and so companies have devised increasingly tricky methods of getting them to open the envelopes. Capital One sends out envelopes that look an awful lot like IRS notifications. They have also disguised the identity of the card issuer, in part to attract customers who may already be mad at the company, and in part to lure consumers to increase their credit lines by offering new cards with enticing introductory pricing. Issuers whose cards offer extremely low introductory rates usually approve less than 5 percent of all applicants, according to McKinley.
Banks invoke all kinds of reasons for raising interest rates.
And banks reserve the right to levy all kinds of fees and rate changes, all in the fine print, of course. And once established, fees have a way of growing exponentially. Not everybody is easily victimized. Those with abundant financial resources usually have the cash flow to pay off and cancel any credit card when fees or interest rates become onerous. It's the financially vulnerable and youngest consumers who suffer the most.