It used to be a snap, finding the best credit card rewards. For a while, credit cards were fighting amongst themselves to attract business, and virtually every card had some sort of gimmick. In those golden days, finding the best credit card rewards usually meant picking the type of reward you wanted among many good cards.

But with the economy in turmoil and new credit laws emerging, it’s not as easy to find those rewards any longer.

What’s changed?

In a word, money is to blame. Credit card companies are working under three major financial blows right now:

1. A struggling economy, which impacts them as much as anyone else

2. A struggling economy, which means people aren’t spending as much on credit cards (and subsequently, aren’t paying as much in interest) while more frequently defaulting on loans

3.

Read full article…

But some are duping consumers by offering worthless rewards that are seldom claimed, a Money Mail investigation has found.

And there are four million of us sitting on an estimated £4 billion of perks.

Our analysis revealed that an average credit card spend of £5,000 a year buys precious few worthwhile rewards.

But canny shoppers who put all spending on their card (and pay it off) can pick up some decent perks.

Tricks from card companies include:

Making it difficult to claim your reward points.

Charging annual fees if you want to earn rewards.

Slashing the value of cashback schemes after the first year.

Capping how much cashback you can earn.

Locking out peak holiday periods or making few seats available on airline schemes. <

Read full article…

If you are enrolled in a frequent flier or have been accumulating miles on an airline rewards credit card, you may have already noticed that while it’s easy to collect big mileage bonuses, cashing them in is a whole other story. Firstly, finding an available seat when you go to book your free ticket may not be that easy. Even worse, the miles you thought you had may have long since expired.

According to New York Senator Charles Schumer, airlines are cheating frequent fliers and rewards credit card users out of billions of dollars of unused miles every year, and he wants to put a stop to it. On Monday, Schumer called for new rules to protect consumers from losing their frequent flier and rewards credit card miles, because airlines fail to honor the miles.

At the heart of the matter is the fact that many consumers try to cash in their miles only to find that they have expired without them receiving any notice of the pending expiration. A

Read full article…