A report on credit card deals has found that 68% of people, over the last three years, have not compared other deals on offer when purchasing a credit card.
Out of all of the people questioned, 13% had compared a maximum of three other credit card deals before deciding on the one they chose and 32% had taken the advice of their bank on which card to go for.
According to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), the 68% of people who had not compared other credit carddeals on offer had significantly reduced their chances of getting the best deal that suited their specific needs.
It would appear that the reasons few people are comparing credit cards is because it is a very in-depth topic and forms often contain a lot of jargon in them. The main groups of people found to be susceptible to not researching their credit cards sufficiently enough were people who thought they were unable to understand the information, people over the age of 65, those who only had the one credit card and people who did not use the internet for buying purposes.
Whilst conducting the study into credit cards, OFT discovered that many people seemed to opt for the credit cardsthat belonged to a brand that they knew, the offers that came with the card and the interest free period, to name a few. This is the sort of information that is usually found within an advertisement and as most will not read through all of the excess forms and information, they end up oblivious about the drawbacks.
