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Be wary of credit card companies and their tactics

Late last week, we wrote a post about how scammers call people and act like they are from the IRS to take money from people. This is not how the IRS functions. They will not call you asking for money immediately. Everything is a process when it comes to the IRS. So if you get one of these calls that demands immediate payment, hang up the phone.

Building off of that theme of scams and dishonesty, today we are going to talk about the shady practices of some credit cards companies and how they may try to rope their consumers into more debt than they should have. For example, you may have heard that Citigroup was recently fined $70 million and will have to give customers an additional $700 million to make up for deliberate attempts by Citigroup to divert customers down financial paths that made them pay more in fees, even though they didn’t need the services these paths offered.

That’s just one example. There are companies that will purposely misconstrue “ambiguous answers” provided by customers over the phone to enroll them in programs, even if the customer has not asked for it. There are bizarre fees that seemingly have no correlation to your account (or reality, for that matter). There are “free” services and offers that aren’t actually free.

These are all examples of illegal and nasty tricks that credit card companies may try to pull on you. Debt is debt, no matter if it involves taxes, property, or plastic cards. Protect yourself and your interests when sensitive financial topics are being discussed.

Source: Crain’s Wealth, “Don’t fall for these 7 credit card company tricks,” Accessed July 28, 2015