Stop Receiving Credit Card Offers

How many times per week does your mailbox contain an offer for a pre-approved credit card? If you're like most people, you are receiving between two and ten pre-approved credit card offers each and every week! In a time when everything is being made from recycled materials in an effort to help save our environments from excessive waste products that are filling up our landfills and polluting our earth- you probably find the number of pre-approved credit offers a big waste of paper. Particularly if you're not even considering obtaining a new credit card.

Unfortunately, the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970 (and ammended in 1990) gives the credit bureaus permission to sell your credit history information to credit lending companies. In order to keep it "fair" for consumers, however, the ammendment of 1990 allows for consumers to choose NOT to receive these offers.


Stop Receiving Credit Card Offers
How many times per week does your mailbox contain an offer for a pre-approved credit card? If you're like most people, you are receiving between two and ten pre-approved credit card offers each and every week! In a time when everything is being made from recycled materials in an effort to help save our environments from excessive waste products that are filling up our landfills and polluting our earth- you probably find the number of pre-approved credit offers a big waste of paper. Particularly if you're not even considering obtaining a new credit card. Unfortunately, the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970 (and ammended in 1990) gives the credit bureaus permission to sell your credit history information to credit lending companies. In order to keep it "fair" for consumers, however, the ammendment of 1990 allows for consumers to choose NOT to receive these offers. The selling of your credit history to credit card companies does not affect your credit score in any way, but may show up as an "inquiry" on your report. An inquiry is when a company has looked at your information, in order to determine your eligibility requirements. When an individual is not interested in getting more credit however, it seems ridiculous for them to receive so many "pre-approved" credit offers in the mail each week.

There are three things you can do to stop receiving these annoying credit card offers. The first, and the most fun, is not as effective as the second and third actions you can take, but is highly recommended anyway just for the entertainment value. Each of your credit card offers will most likely come with postage paid, return envelopes. Companies pay more than the standard rate of postage in order to get these envelopes- but only if the envelopes are actually placed in the mail. They pay nothing for postage on the envelopes that we just toss in the garbage. The theory is if you stuff other junk mail into the postage paid return envelopes and mail enough of them back to the companies, they will stop sending out unsolicited offers so that they are not paying for wasted return postage. While this could be really fun, and you might feel like quite the rebel when doing it, you may not get much of a result.

Each credit card offer you receive should have a fine print section that includes how you can prevent the credit bureaus from including you in the pre-screened lists that result in your getting credit card offer after offer. Most people never even see the fine print because the offer ends up being tossed in the trash immediately, or because, well, it's fine print.

The other two actions you can take to stop receiving credit card offers are to visit a website and fill out a formal request: http://www.optoutprescreen.com, or make a phone call to 1-888-5-optout. This is an automated service that is supposed to be run by the main four credit bureaus, so it should stop all pre-screened mailings that come from any of the four bureaus.

There is really very little benefit to receiving the countless credit card offers in the mail each week. It's wasting paper and time, not to mention providing you with offers that are probably not as good as the offers you could get if you actually called or applied for a card with the company sending the pre-screened offers. If you decide after opting out of pre-screened lists that you want to get a new credit card, you can use the internet to find a new card to apply for or simply call your local bank!

How Business Owners Can Choose a Credit Card.

Small business owners now have a wide variety of credit cards to choose from, and it makes it difficult to choose the best one for your small business. As a small business owner, you will need to decide which features you think that the company will use most often, and if they are worth using and having, before applying to a card. Many of the credit card companies now offer many attractive tools that can and will help each small business owner in their everyday spending and tracking. Also remember that it is harder to keep getting credit cards after the first couple, so choose wisely when choosing business credit cards.


Should you pick a business card that offers rewards or miles?

If you have no problem paying off the credit card debit each time the statement comes in, then the point rewards or cash back is the way to go for you. With the cash back and rewards credit cards, they give you rewards for spending money on everyday business needs, which is money you are going to spend anyway, so why not be rewarded for it. Another option to consider when choosing a credit card is the travel reward and miles credit cards. Do you or someone in your company travel on a regular basis? Then a travel reward or miles reward card is the type of card you might want to use. Most of the popular airlines have now teamed up with the credit card companies to bring business owners a reward for traveling for business purposes.

Should I get help tracking and reporting your expenses?

Most credit cards that are geared for the small business and even for larger businesses now, have a feature that is attractive in more than one way. The credit card companies can now track the categories that money is being spent on every month, and they can also provide a quarterly or annual spending report. This comes in handy during tax time. If you plan to use the same credit card for all of your expenses, this may be a great option for you.

Do members of your staff need to have access to a credit card?

Most of the credit card companies that offer cards to small businesses have a feature that allows employees of the business to also carry a credit card. This feature helps the business owner and the employee. When the employee travels now, they have the business with them to back them up in case anything should come up. Employees now can keep track of their spending for business related purposes a lot more efficiently now. The credit card companies can also track the credit card expenses separately so there is no confusion over who spent what. Not to mention the reimbursement paper work and waiting will now be eliminated. The credit card companies also allow the owner to set the amount of funds that are available to each card.

Small business owners also need to watch out for credit cards and the rates they charge with balance transfers and also with the APRs. This can be a great asset to a small business owner. Zero percent interest on balance transfers seems to be the going rate right now, and makes it nice to have an interest free loan for a little while, but beware! If you miss one payment you will lose that nice 0% APR and will have to pay the full rate.

Credit cards have changed so much over the years. They are very helpful to the business owners and their employees. Most credit card companies have now done away with the yearly fees that used to be associated with owning a credit card. So, if you are a business owner that pays the balance every month, these are the types of cards you need to apply for.