Give Me Some Credit! (Updated)



I noticed long ago that I get a lot of credit card offers. Beyond the standard junk mail and insurance offers (probably a topic for another post), credit card offers come weekly. But what really started to catch my eye was that it was the same offer, over and over again: Barclay Card, Capitol One and Discover. I would make a joke of it, "Look! An offer for Barclay Card!" So, I decided to start collecting them, to see how often they really do come. I started this project in early March, and the stack of offers is so high, I'm declaring an end to it. Here are my findings:



Barclay Card: 16 offers
Discover Card: 13 offers
Capitol One: 19 offers
Grand total: 38 credit card offers from three companies in 6 months

This is (with the exception of just a couple from Capitol One) all for one person in our household! These mailers are heavy, high quality printing, and in the case of Discover, glossy. They are not cheap to produce, and cannot be cheap to mail. How much money do credit card companies spend, saturating the market with these mailers?





ORIGINAL POST, 6/20/14:


The Other Half and I have each had our troubles with credit in our lives, thankfully at separate times, and also thankfully in the distant past. But I'm amazed at how much the credit card companies want our business. After years of offers, about six weeks ago, I decided to start collecting the offers, just to see how often they really come. To date: 5 Capital One Card, 5 Barclay Card, 3 Discover Card. In all, 13 offers from three companies in six weeks. Even more odd, only one was for me! I guess I've been out of debt so long, they don't think I'm interested any more?

But keep this in mind, next time you wonder why your interest rates are so high: how much money are they spending on these repeated, excessive, expensive, glossy mailers?