Don't Revolve Balance With this Card
Written: Apr 11 '05
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Customer Service: |
 |
|
| Web Site Experience: |
|
|
|
Pros: Cashback Program
Cons: High APR two-cycle billing not accepted everywhere and most everything else
The Bottom Line: Avoid this card unless you will never ever revolve a balance.
|
|
|
| cherrod's Full Review: Discover Card |
I first got this card during Student Banking Week at school. It was one of my first cards at at first it seemed to be a good one at the time even though it isn't accepted in as many places as Visa and Mastercard. They even had a nice cashback program.
Over time, they kept raising the limit. Were even willing to reissue my card as a Platinum Card. What they weren't willing to do was lower their APR, no matter how good my payment history was or how much I spent on the card. This should have been a sign, but I was young and didn't know any better. Over the course of time, they began to change their other terms to not benefit the consumer. This included grately modifying the terms of the cashback program (minimum $20 for redemption) and the switch to 2 cycle billing procedures for interest calculation, which at first wasn't a problem until I started revolving my balances, something I don't reccommend with this card because they will make it as hard as they can for you to pay it off.
Eventually I decided to reevaluate my financial life. Long story made short is that I'm trying to pay this and a few other cards off. In order to do this I entered a repayment program. They way it works is that a certain amount gets taken out of my checking account every month and gets distributed tword the repayments. Unfortunately, Discover has been the least lenient in working with me. My balance on the other cards was higher but now two years plus years later, they other cards are much closer to being paid off then the Discover Card account. They did lower the APR by about 3 points but my APR was already way too high to begin with so this wasn't as helpful as one might think. With that and their two-cycle billing, it will take a lot longer to pay it in full. I don't blame Discover for my financial issues, that is my responsibility, but be forewarned, if you run into a problem down the road they won't be as helpful as one might expect them to be.
Which brings me to my most recent billing misunderstanding. I have never once been late in my payments. Billing statements in my case are determined around the second of the month. Payments are due on the first. A few months back, the statement came out when it was supposed to. Due on the first. And I made my payment like it was supposed to. And it was posted on the 15th or so like it was supposed to be according to the statement I received the following month. However, further down the statement it said because my payment was late (mind you it posted a full 2+weeks BEFORE it was even due) it said they were going to report me for being past due. Needless to say I was unimpressed. I wrote them a letter, and the past due notation was removed from my statements. I haven't checked my credit reports yet to see if they have made good but will be doing so soon.
Overall, if you are very dilligent about paying this card off every month and never revolve a balance on this card, it may be a good card for you. However if you think you may need to revolve a balance at some point, I would go with another issuer because you will be saving yourself a lot of grief down the road. For most people, I do not reccomend this card.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
cherrod
|
|
Reviews written: 2
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.