Expert urges caution over credit card decisions

Stephen Rose from the Debt Advice Bureau insists that spending as little as 20 minutes assessing the offers available could help consumers avoid thousands of pounds worth of credit card debt.

Advice can be useful, Mr Rose maintains, but generally would-be credit card users need to understand what deals would be best suited to their lending requirements before taking up a particular deal.

“If [a consumer has] an existing balance on the credit card the type of card they are going to be shopping around for is the one with the best balance transfer deal,” he said.

“Whereas if they are using the card for purchases and have no debt, they are going to go for a card that has zero per cent on purchases for a year,” he added.

The UK’s overall personal debt management burden now stands at more than £1,325 billion, according to figures from Credit Action.