Aspire Visa

Since I have an Aspire Diamond Visa, I have tried to figure out its relationship to their other products. I got an offer for the Visa Gold, on top of the Diamond Visa, before I had even sent in my first payment. With the details of that offer, I thought I knew everything about them. Little did I know...

First of all, the rate on th Diamond Visa can vary. Mine is 30.25%, and at that rate I would never carry much of a balance. My mail offer for the Visa Gold said 28.25% for Gold, 30.25% for Diamond, and 35.25% for Classic.

Now I check out their website (aspirecard.com) and find rates for the Diamond card that vary from 18.25% to 28.25%. Someone had posted that before, and I thought it was outdated information. Now I realize it's the latest information.

Not only that, but I can only find the Diamond rate on their website. So I conclude:

(1) Aspire, like Capital One, jacks up the prices for preapproved mail offers. You pay a little more, but are somewhat more likely to be approved than if you apply cold over the Internet.

(2) The Gold and Platinum Visas aren't available over the Internet at all. The Gold appears to be offered by mail to holders of the Diamond Visa. The Platinum may be offered by mail to holders of the Diamond or Gold Visas, or it may be window dressing for a bait-and-switch operation, and never offered at all. I don't know if it's even worth having.

If anyone's interested, I have a firm position about the Aspire Diamond Visa:

Other subprime cards, like Capital One and Providian, are better for building a credit record. As soon as you have a few prime cards, they are no longer necessary.

Aspire is good for emergency credit while you're building a credit record.

No one should ever carry a balance for more than a few months on a subprime card. Long-term balances should be carried only on prime cards, and preferably not at all.

As soon as you have all the prime credit you could ever want, in amounts as large as you could ever want, then you are no longer building credit. Until then, Aspire is a good source of short-term or emergency credit, since it doesn't affect your reported ratios.

 

I completely agree with you! I just got an Aspire diamond card and that is exactly how I will use this card - very sparingly. Those freaks at Aspire have their nerve charging an 30% APR - but that's the price we pay for our past credit mistakes! Maybe after we establish ourselves with a good payment history, they will lower the APR. I also asked them about their policy of not reporting to the CRA's, they said they will if you send them a written request (I am guessing it is probably a one time deal).

 

Well dave, I wasn't interested in Vaseline. That only appeals to some of the people on this board, not all of them.

I got the card because:

(a) It isn't reported to the credit bureaus as long as you pay on time, and that makes it useful as you apply for prime cards.

(b) It's easy to get. I have a slight weakness for preapproved offers.

(c) It has been widely reported on this board that their service is excellent.

(d) They offer a high initial credit limit to many people. This is no problem for those who pay their balance in full every month, and in that case is a distinct advantage.

(e) It has no annual fee. Few if any other subprime cards have no annual fee.

(f) The cost of credit includes fees as well as interest. That fact is so elementary that Capital One used to print it on some of my statements, when they're the last ones who could benefit from making it known. For any small balance, the Capital One and Providian cards are actually more expensive than the Aspire card.

I was trying to be balanced, and warn people about some pitfalls of the card while acknowledging that it could be useful. We have to dump all our subprime cards eventually, and even the Aspire Platinum Visa may be subprime. But my existing Diamond Visa is one of the last subprime cards I would dump.

Members of this board live in perpetual hope of negotiating the terms on their subprime cards. That's all that makes some of those cards bearable. If Aspire is willing to negotiate, their card could actually become quite a bargain.