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Opinion

Wife is wary of bank's new super credit card

It pays back 4 percent of all purchases, plus 25,000 air miles if used for four months with a minimum amount of $500 each month.

    by Harry Gross | Columnist, Daily News
    Published 

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EAR HARRY: I just received a notice from a bank in which I have a small deposit account, soliciting their new super credit card. It pays back a full 4 percent of all purchases, plus 25,000 air miles if I use the card for four months with a minimum amount of $500 each month. Retail margins are pretty small. How can the bank get enough in charges to retailers to be able to do this? I figure that since it comes from a bank it must be legit, so I signed up for it. My wife thinks it's some kind of scam. She didn't want me to sign up, and she doesn't want me to use the card. What's up here, Harry?

WHAT HARRY SAYS: It sounds perfectly OK if it's clearly from your bank. A friend just got a similar letter and invitation from PNC and it was fine. If you look at the reports of many of our banks, you will find that a major portion of income comes from credit-card activity. That's a result of the charges to the creditors as well as the interest and other fees charged to the card user. Did you ever look at the back of your statements to see what those charges are? They can readily give you those miles, too. Many people believe that this type of charging takes money from the people who have credit problems and gives it to people wealthy enough to pay on time.

Email Harry Gross at harrygrossDN@gmail.com, or

write to him at Daily News, 801 Market St., Philadelphia, PA 19107.

Harry urges all his readers to give blood. Contact the American Red Cross at 1-800-Red Cross.