Credit Card Companies Are Playing Dirty This Summer

Credit card companies have imposed 'astonishing' interest rate rises as families head for their holidays.

It's a very dirty card to play, but the big companies know that with the state of the economy at the moment many British families will be funding some, if not most if their holiday with a credit card.

Brits are expected to spend £22billion on credit cards during this summer. With 13.8million customers regularly failing to pay off their balances each month, the rate increases will bring a cash bonanza for the card companies.

Not only have credit cards increased the APR but there are extra charges for using your credit and debit cards abroad along with withdrawing cash from an ATM.

Despite the fact that the Bank of England has dropped the base rate to 5%, some credit cards have hiked the APR to a staggering 34.9%. That's effectively double the original amount some customers were expecting to pay. Customers with outstanding balances may well find this unmanageable.

With APR's not being shown on statements, just the monthly rate which can be confusing in its self, customers may not be unaware of the amount they are now being charged.

Research by the UK's largest online comparison site, shows that 31 per cent of cardholders have had their APR raised in the past year. Egg, Capital One, Lloyds-TSB and Barclaycard have all raised rates.

The biggest shock will come to those coming off an introductory 0% deal and expecting to pay 15.9% you may now find that you will actually be paying an outrages 27.9%