The fine print

Credit card companies know what features their customers are looking for and naturally use the information to make their terms sound as compelling as possible. For example, they may capitalize on existing legislation designed to protect consumers, and they definitely make liberal use of "the fine print" to qualify their glorious-sounding offers.

In other words, many of their policies aren't as great as they make them out to be, so don't be fooled. Know what you're really getting before you sign up. After all, the last thing you want to do is make an important financial decision based on terms that you don't understand.

Understanding the fine print on a gift card is hard. Trust me, I've spent the better part of a month looking through more than 60 examples.

But after weeks of deciphering Web pages, calling toll-free customer service numbers or even calling or visiting individual stores while researching CreditCards.com's 2011 gift card survey, I think I have a solution for the problem.

Four years ago today, the Taking Charge blog posted its first entry.

I blogged about my daughter, a middle-schooler at the time, who was discovering the convenience of plastic payment cards.

She was a newbie at the school and had not yet gotten her school ID card, which also doubles as the lunch payment card. So, she pulled out cash at the lunch counter and slowed the whole line down. Lesson learned: Plastic is faster and doesn't anger the folks in line behind you.

That was four years ago. The payment card world has changed dramatically since then.

It sounded like a harmless request this past weekend: Sign up to be a bone marrow donor to potentially help people who need life-saving transplants.

I was among tens of thousands of people who packed in to a popular live music festival (Austin City Limits) held in Austin, Texas, each year. I had just arrived and was walking the perimeter of the festival, stopping in at different vendor booths. At one booth, a smiling man approached me asking if I'd like to sign up to be in a database of potential bone marrow donors. Ok, I said, walking under the canopy.

I was willing to give up my bone marrow -- a process that can be extremely painful -- but not my personal information.

Last week's blog about a local discount gas purchase program that doesn't offer reloadable gift cards was selected for the Carnival of Personal Finance's 326th blog carnival.

Canadian Dream, the blog host, recognized the Taking Charge blog for its savings message. Although a Texas grocery store chain is sponsoring a promotion to sell gas for 11 cents less than the market price, the store doesn't provide reloadable gift cards to use for the purchase. Instead, customers must obtain new cards -- and throw the old ones away -- each time they exhaust the funds loaded on to a card. We wonder why the cards aren't reloadable to save the environment.

I got an expected but still surprising reminder this week of the South Florida vacation I took a month ago. It was a $7 charge on my credit card for tolls on the Homestead Extension of Florida's Turnpike.

Rental car companies should warn customers that automated toll plazas may be encountered in a city and that those charges, plus administrative fees from both the toll collector and the rental car company, will be billed to the credit card. Had I been given a heads up by the car company, I would have taken steps to avoid the toll road. There are alternative routes that take longer but avoid the tolls.

It's Day 1 for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- the new federal agency charged with watching out for consumers when it comes to credit cards and other financial products.

Starting today, consumer complaints about credit cards will be collected by a single government agency -- rather than a hodgepodge of regulators that existed before.

Help us kick the tires on this new complaint system. If you have filed a complaint, let us know how it went. Was the form easy to understand? Did you experience any technical difficulties on the website?

Just when I thought I knew everything about my credit card, I went to Norway.

The closing credits are rolling for Blockbuster gift cards.

As part of its slow-motion bankruptcy, the once-ubiquitous renter of videos (how quaint!) has announced it will no longer honor gift certificates or gift cards after April 6, 2011.

The weather was a mess. Cabbies went on strike, making it tough to get around. And worst of all, her most hated team won the championship.

But none of that mattered to Susie Supalo. Her trip to the Super Bowl -- earned by redeeming more than 300,000 rewards points from her NFL credit card -- was still a thrill.

Just a quick note to let the personal finance bloggers in the audience know that Taking Charge has been selected to host next Monday's version of the Carnival of Personal Finance. It will be the 295th edition of the weekly carnival, making it one of the oldest and certainly the most widely known in its genre. We've hosted four previous editions.

Less than a month after its debut, the Kardashian Kard may be kaput. Kanned, Kanceled. Klipped. Kremated.

The prepaid debit card featured high upfront fees ($59.95 for six months or $99.95 for a year-long membership) and was heavily marketed to teens and young professionals. Consumer groups warned teens, their parents and young adults not to be swayed by the card's hip promoters, celebrity sisters Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian.

Consumers Union, the nonprofit owners of Consumer Reports magazine, even started a campaign asking consumers to sign e-cards urging the Kardashians to take their names off the prepaid card.

It looks like they've done just that.

Come Jan. 1, a new provision in the federal government's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will prohibit the purchase of over-the-counter (OTCs) medications from HSAs, FSAs, and similar accounts unless you have a doctor's prescription.

So that means paying for those remedies for tummy troubles and throbbing heads from your HSA or FSA will be off-limits. Your attempt to purchase the products with your HSA or FSA debit card might be blocked, or if the transaction does go through, you might need another stiff drink when you see the stiff penalty you might incur.

But last week, a consortium of pharmacists and grocers asked that the rule be rescinded.

Our blog about the potential pitfalls of the new Kardashian Kard prepaid card was selected for this week's Carnival of Personal Finance.

Hosted by Sweating The Big Stuff, the 284th edition of the personal finance carnival featured a Thanksgiving theme.Categories included The Turkey, Football, Family, Shopping and the Wishbone.

The Kardashian blog reports the growing concerns, expressed by Consumers Union and others, about the prepaid card. Critics say they worry that impressionable young people will sign up for the card, which is marketed by celebrity sisters Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian to teens and young professionals.

It's one thing to be hip and cool, but don't let the cool thing of the moment lead you to make bad money decisions.

That's the message behind a warning issued today by a leading consumer advocacy group about the Kardashian Kard, a new prepaid debit card being marketed to teens and young adults. As its name implies, the card is backed by the Kardashian sisters, Kim, Kourtney and Khloe, the stars of the E! cable network reality series about their lavish lifestyles, "Keeping up with the Kardashians."

Last week, when the Kardashian trio announced they were lending their names and celebrity to a new prepaid debit card, the general reaction from smart money watchers was: Keep away.

It looks like regulators at the Federal Reserve Board were listening when consumer groups and others lambasted a new database of credit card agreements that debuted in May 2010.

Five months after its less-than-stellar debut, the database has had a quiet makeover.But don't get your hopes up too quickly.

I still can't find my individual credit card agreement on the Fed's site. I searched in vain for my Citi Forward card agreement. No luck for me on that one, but others may have better luck, depending on the issuer and how many of their contracts are posted on the Fed's site.

Before making a major purchase -- such as a car, home or costly appliance -- you probably ask the salesperson some tough questions. But do you pose similarly challenging inquiries to the bank when you're applying for a credit card?

The Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) thinks you should.

Thanks to Mary over at the blog Simply Forties for including my post, "Pat Bagley piratically skewers the credit carrrrrd industry," in the blog carnival she hosted today.

This debit card overdraft problem is eerily reminiscent of the subprime mortgage fiasco, which nearly imploded the U.S. economy in 2008. Mortgage lenders made unsuitable loans to low-income families knowing full well they didn't have the means to make the payments.

Unfortunately, there was a financial incentive for everyone along the mortgage lending pipeline to continue to issue subprime loans.

Now, with debit cards, there is a financial incentive for banks and credit unions to sign a certain segment of debit card users up for overdraft protection services -- so that the lenders don't lose a large source of revenue.

The more customers screw up their accounts, the more overdraft revenue a bank collects. All sorts of alarms should be going off here.

"What can we do to make our credit card your No. 1 card?"

I was stumped by the question posed by a cheery-voiced customer service rep last week. I had called my credit card issuer to request a copy of the credit card agreement for one of my cards.

My colleague Jeremy M. Simon was writing an article about how several credit card issuers, including Bank of America, were no longer revealing penalty interest rates to potential and existing customers and he wanted to see an agreement.

For those who don't know, a penalty interest rate is the rate that you will be charged if you screw up and miss payments. It is a higher rate than the normal APR for purchases. It's also known as a default rate.

I have yet another confession to make. Even though I often tell others to read their credit card agreements, I have never done so until now. And I'd be lying if I told you I got much further than the first page.

It's not that I have an aversion to reading. In fact, I love a good book, editorial etc., but there is a reason that I don't reach for my credit card agreement when I want to unwind. It's seriously the most boring and tedious text I've ever tried to understand. And I think that says a lot coming from a recently graduated journalism/neuropsychology student.

Apparently I'm not the only one who has trouble stomaching the fine print. The average credit card agreement is written at a 12.37 grade level, making them incomprehensible to approximately 80 percent of Americans, according to a recent study by CreditCards.com.

I read above a 12th grade level. I've been tested. But even still, skimming my contract made me wonder whether or not I'm in need of some remedial classes. What tripped me up were the insanely long sentences and the feeling that traps lurk within every paragraph.