Recently I received one of those ‘Zero Interest For A Long Time’ offers that also had a zero cost transfer. Or so I thought at the time. After reading the offer, I figured it was one of those instances credit cards are trying anything to get new customers. I do have a couple of credit cards that gave me zero interest for the life of the balance transfer, and am always on the lookout for another one of those.

I went to the web site and registered and such, and was shown the terms again (in VERY fine print) and was given an option to transfer a balance. I put in the balance transfer, and got the standard “We’ll let you know how much we’ll transfer” message. No problem.

A few days later I got the message that the application was accepted, and that $2500 had been transferred. Again, standard and no problem.

A couple of days ago I got the card, and promptly registered at the web site so I could see the account and download transactions. I found a strange ‘Finance Charge’ of $2.06 already applied to the account. Strange, since supposedly it was zero transfer fees and zero interest until Feb ‘09.

I sent off a polite e-mail to the WAMU people to find out what was going on, and got a form letter back saying this was the interest from the balance transfer. I sent off another e-mail but hadn’t heard back from them before I got the first billing statement.

They had put the entire balance transfer amount on the account at 14.99% interest. That’s over twice the interest rate of what I had originally transferred it off of!

A call to WAMU later, I have come to find out that the ACTUAL terms I had agreed to were as follows.

• Any PURCHASES made were zero interest until Feb ‘09
• Any BALANCE TRANSFERS were at zero cost, but at 14.99% interest, effective upon transferring the balance.

Now I don’t consider myself an unintelligent person, and English is my native tongue, so reading the terms of agreement should not have brought me to the conclusion it did if it had not been written in what I consider a HIGHLY DECEPTIVE WAY.

I’m wondering if this isn’t a new bait and switch method that they are attempting to utilize to get customers hooked for balance transfers that they THOUGHT would be at zero interest, but aren’t. Many people would probably not be able to transfer the balances back off the credit card w/o receiving yet another 3-3.5% cost for the transfer.

Luckily, I can, I did, and they’re FIRED!!.

After all the bad experiences I’ve had over the years with credit card companies, I shouldn’t be as surprised about this, but it still bugs me that predatory practices like this continue on. This is one of the main reasons I started this blog was to warn others about these kind of circumstances, and save someone else from having to make all the same mistakes I make.