Forums, chat room and blogs are recently overflowing with complaints from credit card users from across America. Those customers who are complaining are talking about a mysterious $0.25 cent charge on their credit card statements.

These 25 cents have been charged by Adele Services, Melville, N.Y.  A simple search on internet reveals that there is no such company in Melville. even more surprising is that no business by this name was ever registered in state of New York.

People are presenting many theories for explanation of such absurd charges. One is, that it is quite possible that some one got his hands on a large database of credit card numbers and customer information. they are trying to verify the credit card authenticity before ringing up bigger charges on these cards.

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This Monday, credit card issuing companies VISA and MASTERCARD announced that they have settled the anti-trust law suit filed by Discover Financial Services. Discover accused both of the companies of entering in to exclusivity contracts with banks. Such contracts prohibited banks and  other financial institutions to issue competing cards. Discover filed for $6 billion as compensation but settled for less than half that amount.

Visa has a larger credit card holder base and paid the major chunk of settlement amount. Visa Paid $1.8 Billion. While MasterCard with second largest penetration paid only $862.5 Million.

This amount looks big but it is peanuts when it is viewed in context of  Total US Credit Card Market Size. According to Bloomberg

The value of U.S. credit card purchases was $2.17 trillion in 2007, up from $426 billion in 1993.

Previously, AMEX (American Express Company) sued both of credit card Giants and managed to extract about $5 billion in settlement.

So It is obvious that VISA and MASTERCARD have struck a great deal. Paying under $10 billion for un-restricted access to a multi-trillion dollar market is good business in every sense of word.

How these two play with each other is yet to be seen…

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When it comes to credit cards, American’s are least educated people around the world. Our knowledge about them comes mostly from friends and family or credit card sales people. After a long search on forums and blog comments I have come up with the list of 10 things that most of people should know about their credit cards and they don’t. It’s my contribution to help you learn more about your own credit card rights and providing you means and methods to protect them

1) Your Credit Card is Not Valid Till  You Sign it

There is a panel on the back of your card that says “Not Valid Unless Signed”. A large number of people ignore this or just write  “SEE ID” or “CHECK ID”. They become very shocked when some diligent merchants refuse their card.

Let’s have a look at what VISA’s procedures says about what should happen when a customer presents an unsigned card:

1. The merchant will ask for customer’s ID like Driving Licence or Passport.
2. Customer will be asked to sign the card. If he signs it, the signature on the card will be compared to the signature on his ID.
3. If customer refuses, the card will not be accepted.

It is a known fact that most of the merchants don’t follow this policy, but some like UPS are quite strict.

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