NAME CALLING: Credit card companies have names for different categories of consumers, depending on how often they use their credit cards and whether they pay their bills on time. Here's the credit card industry's jargon for its customer categories: "Revolvers" are people who roll credit card balances over month to month, never paying in full. "Deadbeats" pay their balances off in full every month. "Rate Surfers" or "Gamers," switch credit cards based on where they can get a lower APR.
UNIVERSAL DEFAULT: Credit card companies have a range of ways to make more profit from your balances. One sneaky way is through a regulation called "universal default," which allows credit card issuers to increase your APR by as much as 20% or higher if you have missed a payment on another unrelated credit card. Issuers can also jack up your APR if they think your balance is too high on another card, of it they "find out" that you missed a payment--even years ago--on an old card. Unfortunately, there is nothing consumers can do about this because the "universal default" regulation is legal.
NAME CALLING: Credit card companies have names for different categories of consumers, depending on how often they use their credit cards and whether they pay their bills on time. Here's the credit card industry's jargon for its customer categories: "Revolvers" are people who roll credit card balances over month to month, never paying in full. "Deadbeats" pay their balances off in full every month. "Rate Surfers" or "Gamers," switch credit cards based on where they can get a lower APR.
