I thought I’d revisit the issue of credit card issuer quality, the reason being that I found this CFPB complaint database and thought it would be fun to run the numbers. The database lets you sum complaints by issuer, so all I summed up the total credit card complaints this year through May 31.
Obviously, large issuers will have more complaints, so to level the playing field I divided the complaints by each issuer’s outstanding credit card receivables (as of mid-2011, but close enough for our purposes, with the GE and Amex numbers coming from their 2012 annual reports) to come up with a complaint index. This isn’t meant to be any authoritative statement on how good or bad issuers, it’s just a check to see what the data shows us.
And here’s what it shows us:
And what do you know? Capital One and Citi are once again in the discussion! Joining them is Barclays, which doesn’t surprise me too much based on grumbles I’ve seen about them in various forums. Chase and Bank of America come off fairly well, relatively speaking. And keep in mind that HSBC’s credit cards are now part of Capital One.
MONEY ON SALE: Through June 15, OfficeMax is giving you $10 off a gift card purchase of $200 or more. As you might have guessed, folks at Flyertalk are reporting success in buying more than one Visa gift card per shopping trip. The T&Cs do not prohibit this, so have at it!
SPEAKING OF MONEY SALES: Frequent Miler is a fan of money sales and other good deals, and he’s launched a new feature on his blog to list hot deals.
DOOMSDAY PREPPERS IN THE CLEARANCE BIN: Courtesy of The Reformed Broker. (H/T: The Big Picture)
“The Big Picture” piece is interesting… thx for sharing