Credit card ‘benefits’ doing no good |
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Published
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Mon, 14 Mar 2005 01:00
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Credit cards with fringe benefits do seem lucrative but beware; most of them barely come to any use at all. Industry experts reveal that these frills attached to cards to make business remain unused for a majority of card holders and hence, they should not be allowed to govern your choice of card.
However, benefits like purchase insurance and travel protection are gradually being withdrawn by card providers in view of the changes in insurance policies which has made it difficult to afford these benefits.
| Moneysupermarket.com reports Halifax, Sainsbury's Bank, Lloyds TSB and HSBC as the early ones to have terminated purchase protection cover and Barclaycard to have withdrawn all insurance gains this year. Subsequently, the remaining benefits now seem practically useless and have little to offer.
Nick White, head of personal finance at uSwitch.com revealed that few offers like discounts on frequent holidays or purchase of CDs in bulk could be worthwhile. Yet, one must be cautious since these offers come with conditions applied to them and can be used in earmarked places only.
Halifax nevertheless maintains that withdrawal of valuable insurance benefits will not affect their sale of cards since their previous offers were seldom used by cardholders, with the number of insurance claims hardly being a handful.
Barclaycard, on the other hand claimed that it had no profitable intentions of saving through the attached benefits and that they were done purely for the ‘good’ of the customers. It said that policies were made after proper customer research, therefore keeping in mind the customers’ optimum interest.
uSwitch.com, finally recommends every customer to weigh out the card package well and then opt for sensible gifts like cashback or reward points which make a card shift easier for the customer in case the present one isn’t satisfying enough.
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