Are you being ripped of by your Store Credit Card?
Online Money Tips - Did you know that lots of the store Cards are charging up to 50x the base rate!
Your not reading this wrong.. your eyes are not deceiving you, you may just be
paying 50 times plus for your store cards. These are the high street 'big names'
as well not some small shops trying to pull some sort of scam.
The problem lies in the fact that lots of shoppers do not class these cards as
standard credit cards and the unwary shopper falls into a sense of loyalty to
the store themselves. How many people that have a store and credit card class them
as being the same thing? not many in reality.
These card normally start off with the standard 'buy now and pay later' and combine the
offer with a free interest period of normally between 40 and 60 days. After this free credit
period period is over you then start to pay an average rate of anything between 18% and
29% for purchases and 25% upwards for doing a cash withdrawal. I for one think that this
is just not worth the costs involved.
Which of the major brands are the worse?
Well, normally it's not who you would expect with the top offender being the 'creation
Account Card' (these can be used in various stores and you can find these out via the
stores listed within the DUET network list). These cards charge a whopping 30.9% APR!!
Just look at this for a moment... the current base rate is around 0.5%, so how much of
your hard earned cash is being lost through the use of these cards? In reality it is
a huge amount.
Can you guess which high street well known brands are next in the list at 29.9% APR?
Well next in the list are the popular store 'Miss selfridge', 'outfit'. 'burtons',
'Dorothy perkins' and 'wallace'.
Next we have a tad lower rate at around 29% APR.. This may be a little lower but still
extortionate.. Here we have some of the other favorites 'bhs', 'new look' and 'oasis'.
The lowest rate I have came across would be around 15.3% APR which is still huge and
this was from 'Fortnum and Mason'
So what is the best route to take if you have a store (credit) card?
If you in a position to do so, then I would seriously advise you to pay off you remaining
balance on the card as soon as possible. Then cancel the card itself and cut it up.
If you have a large amount of debt on the card and cannot afford to pay it off then don't
worry I have a plan for you as well 
Find the best 0% on balance of transfer 'credit card' (ie. master card or visa) and use
that card to pay off the balance on your 'store card' then cancel your store card and
cut it up. At this point you will be in a better position to pay off the debt within
your 0% APR period without accruing any interest as you would have done with the 'store card'.
Now take your new credit card and cut it up / destroy it, so that you do not have the
ability to use it when tempted. Once you pay off the outstanding transfered balance then
cancel the card.
This is the best way to reduce your debt and get rid of your store cards.
Hope this was helpful and opened a few people eyes to the 'rip-off' store cards trap
that many people unknowingly fall into.
