NtJS Mailbag - Mr Credit Card, Again
It's likely that many of you missed our first Mailbag post with Mr. Credit Card back in March. He had contacted us for a survey he was doing about credit cards:
We seemed like an odd choice to complete such a survey, and we still feel that way. We answered his questions and even went so far as to post our answers ourselves."Mr Credit Card here. I am conducting a survey among personal finance, investment
bloggers about their credit cards and would appreciate if you would participate
in this survey. I would compile the results and publish it in my blogFYI - I will not reveal your individual answers."
Today, we found this in our inbox:
"Mr Credit Card here. During March and April, I sent out an email to do aI reviewed his survey results, and I really don't agree.
credit card survey. In fact, I sent out to over 150 pf bloggers. 45 of you
have responded to the survey and I want to thank all of you for that.
---
I want to thank you all once again. In return for participating in this
survey, I will mention your blogs in a special post tomorrow (hint : it's
not just a post full of links)."
So much so that I posted a comment to that affect. I'm not trying to piss on his parade, but the results and conclusions seem terribly biased and self-fulfilling. Not that this was supposedly independent, un-biased, or done by a third-party, but I would recommend that next time. My comment below:
I tried to be nice about it. I'm reminded of when our then Governor was re-elected with 38% of the vote. Yes, he received the most votes of any candidate, but his statement later that, "the people have spoken and made their choice", got to me. The people had spoken all right - and 62% said, "Not you!" Thus, if someone were to make a statement like, "most people chose this candidate", it would be equally inaccurate."Mr. Credit Card-
I have to speak up and say that I take issue on a few points here…
1> Under “How Many Credit Cards do you have?”, zero is not an option? So for folks who have none, were those results thrown out? It’s ok if they were, but that should be noted.
2> Under “Executive Summary”, maybe the intent is correct but not the wording. You note that “Most PF bloggers who carry a balance and have credit card debt take advantage of 0% APR teaser deals to help them lower their interest cost.” By my count, your chart shows 6 with 0% and 8 with an APR > 0. 0% is the most in one category, but not the majority overall, which seems more important here. In fact, you show 4 bloggers carrying a balance with an APR 10% or more, which seems like a much more interesting finding.
3> Also under “Executive Summary”, you note that “…most only carry two credit cards and do not go crazy over having many credit cards.” The second part of that statement is an opinion, and doesn’t belong there. Two cards IS crazy to me, let alone 3 or 4. Once again, 2 credit cards is the most of any one category, but the majority actually have 3 or more. In fact, the amount that have 2 cards is equal to the amount that have 4 to 10 cards. Also where is the line of having gone “crazy over having many credit cards”? 3? 4? 10?
In light of those things, I’m really not sure that I understand the main conclusion of “…from this survey is that most pf bloggers make good use of their credit cards and could teach us a thing or two about credit cards.”
Maybe I just look at the results differently."
Oh, well.
0 comments:
Post a Comment