Credit Card Issuers Reputation Review

Posted On: March 20, 2006

Author: credithelp
Posted: Wed Dec 01, 2004 4:24 pm
Post subject: Card issuers reputation

Which card issuers have the best reputations right now and which have the worst ones? I guess this is an opinionated question but was curious.

Providian is one of the creditors at the bottom of the list, but they have been trying to change that - like giving credit scores to customers (I believe they are allowing consumers to view the credit card model scores) not just the generic ones the bureaus would sell to the customer.

American Express, I was just horrified with the slam site I read, their employees are rude beyond believe, almost like a god complex.. I think they are over rated, like Discover myself.

Citibank I think of in the middle like Capital One, easy to obtain on a regular basis, but they can be predatory, on catching people with high interest rates…

Household is another lower lender, being that they deal more in the sub market, like Best Buy, and other stores that would only offer 18% interest rates.. same true with Lowes, JC Penney, K-Mart, Yonkers, Sears… all of them department stores are not worth the 10% discounts they offer to get customers just for the high rates, if you are in the habit to holding balances.

I hear Native say a lot of good stuff about Bank of America though, and they just took over another sub lender Fleet… will be interesting to see how that goes.

I really don’t know too much about other creditors out there, very limited experience myself… like Chase, Bank One, First USA, Pulaski, think of them mid to upper range creditors.

One thing about pulaski is that they seem to sell accounts. Ive only known 3 people to have a pulaski card but each one had it sold to someone else and they were all in good standing. The new creditor raised their rate to around 20%.

In my opinion it should be illegal to sell an account.

This is my list

Top Issuers (aka the BEST)
MBNA
Citi
AMEX
Chase
Bank of America

Mid Issuers (aka Just OK)
Household
Providian
Direct Merchants Bank
Capital One
Discover

Bottom Issuers (The WORST)
Cross Country
First Premier
Aspire

From my own personal experience, I consider CitiBank to be the best. I have a card from them with an interest rate that is about 45% of what I had with Capital One.

I don’t recommend Capital One because their interest rates are too high and they won’t offer better terms to customers that have been with them for 5 years and never paid late. Also, every time I called Cap One’s customer service department they aggressively tried to sell credit insurance and credit monitoring services.

Before selecting a company, you should type their names into some search engines and see what kind of complaint sites turn up. Also, there is a lot of valuable credit card info on this site.