Pre Apporoved for a new credit card.

$700 limit and only a $175 annual fee from First Premier Bank and no interest rate given.
What a deal(?)!

Re-check the fine print and fee schedule. You’re in for a nasty shock.

Here’s a little more.

I don’t think I’d be in for a shock unless it were UNDER 29.99% APR. It says to go look for the insert. I’ll have to hunt it up.

Found it
36% interest.
After the first year $49 annual fee and a $14.50 monthly fee for $174 / year so a $700 card rates $229/yr in fees and $3 per $100 per month in interest.

Still waiting for Western Sky to put out a credit card. :stuck_out_tongue:

Usually they don’t even say “pre-approved” anymore, they say “pre-selected”, whatever that means.

Not likely anytime soon.
A more objective look.
And here.
And here.

I seem to remember, back on campus in the 80’s, being offered a credit card with the yearly fee being equal to the credit limit with the fee charged to the card before you get it.

No risk for the bank since someone has to pay off all/part of it to use it.

Not real happy that both those entities reside in the same state that I do. T. Denny Sanford (First Premier Bank/Premier Bankcard) donates a lot of money and that apparently blinds people to his predatory practices.

Well, people gotta start somewhere. My first credit card was 27%, $500 max, checking account required. I still have it, but I haven’t used it for over 15 years.

On one hand, it’s a terrible deal, on the other hand, it’s often the only deal you can get.

I remember for a long time the maximum annual interest rate for credit cards was 19.8%, which I thought was because of usury laws limits of 20%. Of course they just got around that by adding fees in addition to interest. How are credit card companies now able to charge 36% and more in addition to the fees?

At work we got a “pre-approved” loan thing from American Express for a $40,000 line of credit. Now, the Line of Credit and everything to do with it was actually a really good deal and I like working with American express both personally and as a merchant, but when I talked to them about the LOC they asked me for a ton of information. Personal Financial statement from the owner, Property tax statements, last few years of tax returns (personal and business), bank statements, business financials. Basically, it was no different then asking the bank for a loan. At one point I asked him why I needed all this stuff if we were pre-approved* and he said “Oh, you’ve been pre-approved to receive the offer” That seemed kind of underhanded.

*We process AMEX cards and the amount of our loan was based on how much we process. They would skim off a certain percentage each day with the intention of the loan being paid back in a specific time frame. The fact that we were pre-approved made sense to me. They knew how much of our money had been flowing through them for the last 15 years and could guess what would happen over the next few years. So when he offered us $40K and I said “Great, I’ll take $20K!” I thought he was just going to wire it over and set me up to start deducting it. I had already started filling out all of that paperwork and was surprised when he started asking for other stuff since we were ‘pre-approved’. I almost did what a lot of people probably do. Figured that I was so deep into it at that point (a few days of back and forth via phone and email), that I might as well just gather up the paperwork and send it in. It’s a lot of money and a good deal on it. If he had asked me for all that stuff at the beginning I wouldn’t have gone any further with the conversation.

No offense intended, but do you have bad credit?

But that girl seems so nice. :frowning:

Some states don’t have limits. Here’s the law for South Dakota:

“54-3-1.1. Rate of interest set by written agreement–No maximum or usury restriction. Unless a maximum interest rate or charge is specifically established elsewhere in the code, there is no maximum interest rate or charge, or usury rate restriction between or among persons, corporations, limited liability companies, estates, fiduciaries, associations, or any other entities if they establish the interest rate or charge by written agreement. A written agreement includes the contract created by § 54-11-9.”

That’s why credit card companies like it here. It may be the same for Delaware.

Springleaf now wants to give me a $5250 loan. The payments will only be $170.13/mo for 4 years. That’s over $8000 to pay back for the loan.

My student loan just came off default so we’ll see what other great offers I get.

This could make a great pick-up line. “Hey, baby, you’re pre-approved to go out with me.”

Aha! Springleaf! I got on their mailing list, somehow, for those pre-approved (or whatever) offers. Even the perfunctory discussion in their offer (really, little more than an advertisement) looked slimy.

They have two brick-and-mortar locations in my town. I went to one in my very own person and asked them to forget all about me, which they seem to have done.