If you dont use or have a need for a credit card, then more power to ya. If you find the need for a credit card, here's some personal advice.


My only hope is to help save someone else from the frustration of dealing with this horrible company.



Never...ever....ever....i mean really never get a First National Bank of Omaha credit card. Several years ago my wife and i got an offer in the mail for 0% interest from that bank, when so many others were not offering 0% at the time. We thought that was great, and we had the need at the time. We carried a balance and made payments as scheduled. Then the one time a payment was one day late, literally, it was one day late, then Boom, they hit us with a sizeable late fee, plus a bump in the interest rates they charged monthly. A call to their horrible-horrible-horrible customer service people was fruitless. They all seem to have a chip on their shoulder, or are coached to be hard as stone and non-bending. We had a history of on time payments and were not maxed out on the card, but they did not take that into account or offer any lienancy. They continued that higher interest rate for over a year. Repeated calls to see if they would lower that penalizing interest rate was useless. Each time they said nope. Well then they found a new way to screw customers out of money. When some of the big credit card companies started charging annual fees just to have the card, they decided to penalize more of their members by requiring annual fees on some of their card owners. Not all their card owners, just some. So we've had the card paid off for months and have excellent credit and they decided to bill us for another year to use their credit card. $49 to keep a zero balance credit card open??!!---Nooooo Thank You. Holy moly. I called their horrible customer service today to verify that $49 annual fee really applied to us to and i was going to ask if they wanted to waive the fee to keep a long timer customer, but as soon as the lady got on the line she shifted into bull headed mode, and proceeded to lecture me how they have notified me in 2009, and each consecutive year, that the annual fee is on my account. She did not offer anything for a long term customer. I let her go off and then with a smile and polite voice asked what's the quickest way to pay off the card today and close my account and get my $49 back. It didnt phase her. I paid it off and closed my account. I only had my Norton account on the balance so it wasnt much effort to pay off. The fact that it didnt seem to phase her that a customer was willing to close an account over $49 just tells me that they have a HUGE customer base and that my account was probably just a drop in their bucket.

So if you or your kids are looking into credit cards, save yourself from the hassle and headache of First National Bank of Omaha.

 

I hate credit cards and I hate most companies who issue them. However, earlier this year I got a mastercard from USAA. No special buy in offers or other loss leaders to catch my attention. USAA in fact carries my home mortgage so I feel very comfortable with them. So far they have been great to work with. We usually pay 2-3 times the minimum due and having done this for several months now, they tell us that we don't owe a payment for 5-6 months. We still pay on time as I haven't learned to trust anyone just yet.

But, I've had a few bad experiences along the way and I can totally relate.

 

Most credit card companies are like that. Don't EVER be a day late, or suffer the consequences.

 

Tim you better double check them. You may have already.

I had the same thing they told us nothing it due and we paid anyhow and they applied every bit of the payment to intrest and none to the the card value owed. Even though we put it on the payment, yours may be different though.

 

I have managed so far to basically live without credit. I don't have a fancy tv, new car, or any of the other status symbols that come with huge bills, and if it wasn't for my DB brother in law I'd actually be a bit ahead right now.
Some of the pre-paid cards are just as bad, though. I had one last year that charged a monthly fee, POS fees, ATM fees, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Not small fees either, it was $2 for any transaction minimum.

 

Tim, you better listen to Rock on this. Every credit card I had that maintains a balance required a monthly payment. Any credit card that says you're paid up a few months in advance means they are most likely applying your payments towards interest, not the balance. Any credit card company that does this needs to be paid off, credit card canceled, and open up another account with a better run outfit. We have a couple cards through the bank we use locally, and we rarely have a balance with them. Wasn't that way 10 to 15 years ago!

 

Thanks for that guys. They actually apply the full amount I paid to the balance as it drops each time by the amount paid. This is why I went with USAA instead of another card issuer as they have been way above board on my mortgage and very easy to talk with and deal with.

 

Well thats a good thing. Now if you dont want to pay them the funds please pm me for my bank routining number and you can slide some over my way.

GOOD MORNING TIM :?)

 

We use credit cards almost exclusively for our purchases. But, we are fortunate that we are able to pay them off every month.

The benefits are enhanced warranties, rebates/rewards and in some cases (like Sears) additional discounts. Just bought a new dishwasher that was on sale plus 15% off when put on the Sears card that I will pay off when the bill comes in.

I don't like debit cards because they do not provide the protections that CCs do against fraud and I write very few checks at ...almost zero...at retail stores.

 

Your exactly correct.

Our local district attorney has had her ID stollen a couple of times and she has since determined that the majority of the information was taken at resturants. There for she recomended always pay in cash in resturants.

So they first got her on the Debit card and then later on the Credit Card.

Since hearing about that, we only pay in cash in resturants. Just takes a little more time for the peace of mind.

 

I do not even own a debit card as I carry a higher balance than I am willing to lose in our checking accounts.

My credit card has been scammed twice...from the same hotel I might add, in Chicago. Between the two scams the bad guys got away with over $ 12,000.00 worth of purchases. Mostly gold and coins. The banks removed all contested charges.

I suspected someone in this hotel the first time. So six weeks later I went to the same hotel and used the re-issued card exclusively at this location. BINGO...happened again. When I reported this to the CC bank security/fraud people...they said thanks for the info but, $ 12,000.00 was not enough of a loss for them to spend much in the way of investigative resources.

I then contacted the Security folks at the hotel corporate office. They took my info and I never heard from them again.

 

No, you're not fortunate, you're simply smart enough not to charge more than you can afford to pay off every month. Regardless of your worth, you can still spend more than you make and go in debt. Just look at our government.

Unfortunately, this is a costly lesson to learn. It can take years to dig yourself out of a hole from running up a credit card debt.

I don't like debit cards either. I got scared about them many years ago and pulled it out of my wallet and stuck it in my night stand. Then a couple of years later I got a phone call asking if I had bought gas with my debit card. When I told them I don't even carry it and never use it, they said that's the reason it showed up on the fraud alert. They cancelled it, didn't charge me, and I haven't bothered to replace it since.

I do get fraud alerts from my credit card all the time now. They send me a text immediately after the clerk tells me the card has been denied. Text says press 1 if you are making this purchase, I reply back with 1 and tell the clerk to run it again and it works that quick every time.

I can replace a lost credit card. Much harder to replace lost cash.

 

I guess I'm a bit old fashioned or even paranoid perhaps. My CC stays in the house and is used about once every 6 months to purchase a tank of gas or to make some small purchase just to keep it active.

Unless I'm travelling in vacation, I carry cash. I stop at gas stations where there is a cash island in the middle and I pay cash for everything I buy.

I do carry a debit card but it's more of a back up for my wife's card.

On Thanksgiving day, we got a phone call from our bank's fraud folks. It turns out that some jackwagon got my wife's DC numbers and bought two train tickets in France.

The card was cancelled and the funds were never processed as the card was immediately declined. Had the funds been expended, we would have been reimbursed on the next business day anyway.

 

I use my credit card...singular...in lieu of cash...everywhere I go. The balance gets paid off every month when the bill arrives. No debit card...no ATM card...just 1 credit card. If you're not disciplined enough to use a card responsibly...you shouldn't have one. Over limit fees and late charges will abolutely kill you. Most cards will default to an exceptionally high rate if you're over limit or late.

 

Exactly. This is precisely why I no longer have any credit cards - I've been without them since the last bankruptcy. I can't balance a budget to save my life, but I'm learning and I'm getting better...

I do everything in cash. We have debit cards through the credit union, but the only time I use mine is when paying a bill online or purchasing something online - and then, the card gets run through as a Visa CC.

We have had our debit cards "hacked" a couple of times, but we're pretty sure it happened when the wife used her card at a gas pump. The credit union is quick to catch on to those sort of things and they refunded us each time it happened. The wife has since stopped going to that gas station...