Which? warns against store cards

Sales staff are unaware of the costs of the store cards they attempt to sign customers up to, according to consumer magazine Which?

07:43 02 December 2004

Sales staff are unaware of the costs of the store cards they attempt to sign customers up to, according to consumer magazine Which?

The magazine found that while staff in high-street shops are well aware of the benefits and discounts available to customers who sign up to their branded credit cards, not one of the people tested by the magazine could answer all the questions asked about major factors in the cost of the cards.

"If you manage to buy your Christmas presents without getting the hard sell on a store card, you can count yourself lucky," commented Malcolm Coles, editor of Which?

"They're an expensive way to borrow and if the staff pushing them don't know how much they cost, we wonder how many people who've been persuaded into taking them realise they're being charged through the nose."

Undercover researchers from Which? tested staff in ten high-street stores to find out if they could outline the interest rate, late payment charges and whether application forms could be taken away to give consumers time to look through them in detail.

In one shop staff claimed late payment fees were 1.5p for every 1 and in another sales assistants said the charge was ten per cent of the amount borrowed, in both cases the real late payment charge was 18.

In another shop three members of staff gave a different answer about the store card's interest rate. These answers ranged between 2.5 per cent to 19 per cent, while the actual rate of interest charged by the card is 29.9 per cent.