Worst: First Premier Bank Mastercard

This card made our list of the worst cards two years ago, and it doesn’t look like it has improved. In 2007, First Premier signed a $4.6 million settlement with the New York Attorney General’s office over the card’s deceptive marketing practices. First Premier’s card now advertises a $25 to $95 processing charge (which fluctuates by the minute, depending on when you click on the card’s website). What’s worse is that when you drill deeper into the fine print, you’ll find a $75 annual fee and an APR of 23.9 percent to 59.9 percent on purchases and cash advances (again, depending on when you visit the site). So you could face a minimum of $100 or a maximum of $170 in fees in the first year for a card with only a $300 initial credit limit. Other fees include an $11 charge for expediting bill payment over the phone and a credit-limit increase fee equal to 50 percent of the increase. So for every $100 that First Premier increases your credit limit it charges you $50. Also, look out for copycats of this card. First Premier Bank markets very similar cards under the names Centennial and Aventium.

More yummynest. I’m sure glad we elected a mayor that is from this company’s marketing department. I sleep better every night knowing this. It reminds me of Monday afternoon when Huether talked about our city’s great debt management. It sounded like one of those letters from First Premier telling you how great your credit is (even though nobody else was giving you a loan).

5 Thoughts on “Sioux Falls; Home of the worst Credit Card company? Hell Yah! (H/T – Costner)

  1. The mayor said 12,000 is enough to get an opening round game in the NCAA tournament but the Sports Authority guy was on KELO last night saying you actually can’t get an NCAA tourney game with that amount of seats because they require several hundreds more seats beyond 12,000…. WHO IS CORRECT? anyone know??

  2. More to the point though, how would one event that could potentially fill the stadium be a real justification? I’m also curious how many basketball fans there are in the area as I have not met any.

  3. Poly43 on October 7, 2010 at 4:24 am said:

    Ford Center in Oklahoma City hosted last years Midwest Regionals. It has a seating capacity of over 18,000. I read in a Wichita Intrust blog they will never get a sniff at a regional tourney. OFFICIALLY the NCAA set minimum seating at 12,000 way back in 1993. Unofficially a site needs to be north of 16,000 to be considered.

    For the good mayor to even mention NCAA regionals and Sioux Falls in the same paragraph is beyond laughable.

  4. Poly43 on October 7, 2010 at 4:31 am said:

    I’m also curious how many basketball fans there are in the area as I have not met any.

    Well, you could go to a Skyforce game and sit in a half filled arena cheering them on with the other 2500 fans. Or you could have gone to the Summit League tourney last year where 14 games averaged 2477 souls in a sea of empty seats.

  5. oh come now, we all know the reason no one goes to skyforce games or the summit league tourney, is because of the arena. if we had a new arena, all the people who go to watch the naia tourney in sioux city, would save there money and come here instead. i know, because some guy spending the afternoon drinking at rookies said so on kelo the other night.

Post Navigation