Card Debt

Do Credit Card charges need investigating?

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) have been asked to look into the way credit card companies charge interest to their customers.

Which? magazine claims that two cards showing exactly the same interest rate could charge widely different amounts depending on how each company calculates it's interest charge.

Which? claims there are at least 12 different ways of calculating interest that would result in different amounts being charged, even though the same typical APR rate could be shown to the consumer, and this, it claims, is very misleading.

In an example it shows that one card could end up charging over 40% more on the same rate of interest if different calculation methods were used.