Credit Me, Please!
I was contacted by Rudy from CreditMe.com to review to perform a review on his site. I have been shying away from doing paid reviews as I really haven’t gotten any requests worthy of my time or your eyes lately.
This time, when I clicked through to the site, my first impression was “Oh, it’s a list of credit card offers. I also provide credit card offers from time to time, so wouldn’t this be competition?”. I then went about my business, but then revisited the site last night and found more information that I previously had overlooked. So I decided to accept the review because I think creditme.com provides some excellent resources for my readers.
What are these resources? Here’s a snapshot:
I clicked through on the “Resources” link in the top navigation and then on “All you need to know about Credit Cards” to get to the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list. My first impression of the page was 1) There are too many links and 2) Is this site for real, or are these links just collections from other sites? I began clicking around.
The FAQs are in fact real, and actually provide an abundance of information related to credit cards, debt consolidation, fraud prevention, credit scores, and basically everything else that could remotely debt and credit cards. Reading the answers, I can tell that someone actually took some time to think about it and answered in their own “voice”. For instance, the answer to
“What is the flaw in my thinking about my monthly payments that keeps getting me deeper into debt?” is:
If you are like most Americans, it is not uncommon to have spent a bit more on your credit card each month than you have coming in your paycheck. That is because you are a creature of instant gratification and don’t consider the long-term consequences of your spending.
If you know you only have to make the minimum payment on your card that is probably all that you will pay. That minimum payment is now averaging 4%, by the way, up from the old industry standard of 2% of outstanding balances. Congress allowed the credit card companies in the United States to up this figure, as it was fearful of the economic impact of so many millions of its citizens being in high debt.
If you are serious about getting rid of your debt you will have to pay much more then the government mandated 4% interest. To make a serious dent you should be paying at least over 10 % of this debt off each month.
I enjoyed the “creature of gratification” line.
So what bad things do I have to say about the site? Well, first I looked to see what other reviewers had said. I found a review from Free Money Finance from December where he said the site looked “half-finished”. Not knowing what the old design was, I can only give my current opinion. I think the site has a clean look to it, but there are way too many links and the links don’t stand out from the background. I’d like to see even more organization to the FAQ section because there’s just too much stuff. It’s overwhelming. You don’t want to have too many vertical levels, but I think one more consolidation of topics would help the reader.
FMF and I agree that credit cards are ultimately bad, unless you know what you’re doing. However, you thinking that you know what you’re doing and you actually knowing are two different things. I thought I could handle my spending and/or I didn’t care about how much it was all costing me in interest back in college. Now I only use cards when I know I’ll be able to pay them off that month.
My final opinion of the site is that the FAQ and Credit 101 sections are excellent resources and will provide hours of reading (if you have the time). The site still needs more organization and “cleaning” (e.g. make the links more visible, try rounded corners on menu bars, etc.), but the overall value is in the content. If you REALLY need a credit card, and can AND will pay off the balance every month, then feel free to browse through the card offerings. If you want more information on the credit card section, read Fat Pitch Financial’s review.
I’ll mention again that this was a paid review by CreditMe.com. I was under no obligation to provide a positive review. I will never receive payment to give a good review of a site, but I probably won’t bother doing a review of a bad site.