@Anonymous wrote:I think CreditScholar answered the question best about the credit status Simmons First is target marketing. There are many prestigious high income cards offered for private clients and others who post here without the the thought of grandstanding. High AF cards for those frequent flyers offer benefits which serve their individual needs and those folks aren't boasters.
I don't know the history about availability of 0% APR cards but, it seems to me if interest rates make an upward move lenders may pull back from that market. Also, it takes time to acquire a desired 0% APR card and time can be of essence when the need for a low APR card is needed - insurance if you will. PIFFING is always preferred though sometimes sufficient cash is not always on hand to meet an urgent situation. After all, lending is the backbone of the card business not promtional rewards. It seems to me more discussions about low APR lenders should be topics on this forum. Instead many are more interested in big name banks which are not interest rate competitive with credit unions and smaller banks. What does that say about the effectiveness of marketing by the big banks? I like the help from those who wade through the clutter from the biggies.
Admittedly I'd never even heard of this bank but that's not surprising: the vast majority of people on this particular forum (FICO's after all) wind up here on some question of their credit report, or are looking to improve it. One of the primary paths for nearly everyone to increase one's score without long, time-dependent processes, is to pay down credit card debt and then manage one's reported balances for optimization revolving utilization.
This gets beat into pretty much everyone to the point where it just gets ingrained in the common wisdom. I suspect that Simmons and similar, and other primary low-APR cards may receive more interest on other credit-related forums, especially the credit card specific ones.
Also I don't think lenders will move back from their offerings, most credit cards are variable anyway these days and it's moderately rare to see anything not fixed to an external number like the prime rate.
I agree with you that having an insurance policy is always a good idea, but the difference between 7ish% and 9ish% (which is pretty common seemingly) on even a 10K balance kept over a year, isn't enough for me to rush out to qualify for this one particular lender that doesn't appear to have many other things they can actually do for me. My life just isn't that complicated financially and I'm not certain I can every make it so unless I start travelling for work and running business expenses through my personal credit., there's just only so many ways I can slice up my average 2K/month slush fund spending.
