It is a MasterCard that you can use in retail stores to make purchases, but only up to the amount you have deposited onto the card. It is promoted as an easier, smarter way to be debt-free. Upfront she touts that it costs “only $3 a month if you use it how I tell you to.”

The card’s homepage goes on to tout nine benefits of the card including “free Transunion credit score, reports, and monitoring”, “safer than cash”, and “teach your teens financial responsibility.”

A closer look at the fee structure reveals some costly provisions besides the $3 monthly maintenance fee.

*MOUSE PRINT:

CARD PURCHASE FEE — $3
ATM WITHDRAWAL FEE — $2 (if you do not have direct deposit)
OVER-THE-COUNTER CASH WITHDRAWAL — $2

While these fees are less than other competing prepaid cards, this whole genre of card is set up to cost you money rather than save you money.

Making a deposit via direct deposit or transferring money from your checking account electronically to the car is free. (But would someone really put their entire paycheck or social security check onto a prepaid card every month? And if you already have a checking account, might not a regular debit card or ATM card be offered by your bank for free?

*MOUSE PRINT:

Conspicuously missing from their fee list is the cost to deposit money onto your card at an ATM or in person at a store.

Apparently you can only add money at locations that support either Moneygram or Western Union payments. The cost, they say, is typically $3.00 – $4.95. Whatta deal.

Here is another surprise.

*MOUSE PRINT:

If you only read the headlines about the free TransUnion credit score, report and credit monitoring benefit, you may miss the fact that the service is only free for the first year. After that, if you want to keep it, it is $143.40 a year.

Lastly, Suze proudly proclaims:

*MOUSE PRINT:

As she admits in smaller print, debit card purchase information is not part of anyone’s credit report and does not affect your credit score. She merely has a desire to see whether providing card use and purchase behavior to Trans Union will be considered in the future as a predictor of creditworthiness. Put another way, Suze has put a clever spin on the fact that she is sharing your purchase history with an outside company.

Prepaid cards have become popular as moneymakers for issuers particularly since they fall through the cracks of federal reform legislation that covers conventional credit and debit cards. If you must have a prepaid card for some reason, a better choice is the virtually fee-free American Express prepaid card. There is no monthly maintenance fee. In fact the only stated fee is $2 for ATM withdrawals after your first free one each month. Depositing money at a retail location incurs the same approximately $4.95 charge as does the Approved Card.

$400! That’s a lot better than a crappy toaster typically offered in the 1960s. The question, of course, is what do you have to do to get the $400 in giftcards? A lot.

*MOUSE PRINT:

You have to open a Citigold account.

You have to enroll that account in Thank You Rewards.

You have to initiate direct deposit.

You have to make at least one electronic payment for two consecutive months.

You have to wait 90 days after your qualifying transactions to have the 40,000 Thank You points deposited.

You have to keep the account open at least until the points are deposited.

There are required direct deposit/e-payments each month to get points, with changes starting in December.

If you can get over the hurdle of doing all that and waiting five or six months before your points get deposited (and longer to get your actual giftcards), you’re all set.

Oh, wait. There’s more. The gold account has a steep monthly fee, and what may be one of the highest minimum balance requirements needed to waive the monthly fee.

*MOUSE PRINT:

A fee of $30 a month? (And if you have to keep the account open for five or six months, that comes out to as much as $180 — eating up almost half your $400 in free giftcards.) Or, if you want to get that fee waived, you only need to keep $50,000 or $100,000 in the bank.

Funny thing, taking everything into consideration, that free toaster from the 1960s is sounding better and better.

No disclaimers in the ad.  Nothing.  Maybe it’s really totally free!

When you click the ad, you are taken to this page on the MyFICO site:

Still no obvious strings. No asterisk after the word “free”. Go ahead and click the picture to see it full size. There, on the bottom is the VERY small disclaimer that reads:

*MOUSE PRINT:
 

IMPORTANT INFORMATION: When you order your free FICO Score here, you will begin your 10-day trial membership in Score Watch®. If you don’t cancel your membership within the 10-day trial period, you will be billed $14.95 for each month that you continue your membership. You may cancel your trial membership anytime within the trial period without charge.

The free score is only free when you sign up for a free trial, and if you fail to cancel that free trial within a short 10-days, you will be billed $14.95 monthly.

If you missed that inconspicuous disclosure and click to get your free score, you will be asked to part with a lot of personal information, including your date of birth, social security number, password, and full name and address — all before you are told on a subsequent page that you have to give a credit card number and it will be dinged $14.95 a month if you don’t cancel quickly.

FreeCreditReport.com got better about disclosure after the FTC went after them. And a new consumer law, the CARD Act requires better disclosure in ads promising free credit reports where you are really signing up for a trial of a continuing service. The law does not explicitly extend to offers of free credit scores, however. And therein lies the problem. Though general consumer law would require better disclosure, not until enough complaints get filed against “free score” offers, will disclosure likely improve.

Not with Asterisk-Free Checking, they say:

A whole host of services are provided with this account, including “Free Online Banking and Bill Pay”. However, if you are planning to use Quicken to do online banking and pay bills, it is not free.

*MOUSE PRINT:

There is a $2.95 a month charge for “PC Banking”, which apparently is different from “Online Banking and Bill Pay”. That fact is buried in their FAQs which are not accessible from the detailed description page for Asterisk-Free Checking. And true to the name of this account, unfortunately, there is no asterisk leading the reader to this qualification and distinction.

When asked why they don’t disclose that charge upfront, and would they now consider doing so, a spokeperson for the bank replied:

“PC Banking is not actively promoted and is offered only to customers who contact us requesting services not provided through Online Banking. The monthly $2.95 fee applies only to customers using the extra services offered directly through Quicken® and Quickbooks®. Therefore, our Online Banking and Bill Pay services as the vast majority of our customers use them are indeed free.”

MrConsumer is not trying to beat up on Huntington Bank. In fact, it was selected as a refreshing change from how other banks advertise by hiding costly things in asterisked footnotes. However, if they talk the talk, they should walk the walk. No one put a gun to their head and forced Huntington to advertise “asterisk-free checking” and “isn’t it time you switched to a bank that believes in no surprises.” But having gone down that road, shouldn’t they have been a little more forthcoming about the actual cost of “free online banking and bill pay” for those who use Quicken?

Keep imagining. At the bottom of Chase’s full screen ad (which you see after clicking “learn more”) is a not particularly conspicuous link labeled “*Ink Offer Details”. Funny, there was no asterisk in their headline qualifying their 3% claim.

*MOUSE PRINT:

So, the real deal is that you only get 3% back in selected categories (gas, hardware, home improvement, dining, and office supply stores). Otherwise, this is really just a 1% card. And they seem to exclude superstores, discount stores, and warehouse clubs. Hmm, isn’t Home Depot a superstore or discount home improvement store?

And as to the claim that you get “unlimited cash back”, in fact they will limit your extra cash back in the 3% categories to just an extra $40 a month.

So what appeared to be a credit card offering a flat 3% back with no cash back limits, is nothing of the sort.

Mouse Print* pointed out to Chase the potentially misleading nature of their advertisement and asked, “Will Chase revise its advertisements to more accurately say “up to 3% cash back” and qualify its “unlimited cash back” claim?”

Chase replied:

“We are committed to being straightforward in all of our advertising and customer communications. The small banner ad that you are referring to for Ink Cash is referring to the 3% cash back in specific categories and [sic] the then the unlimited cash back for the 1% on everything else.

Our team is reviewing the copy now and although limited by the small space on the banner ad itself, wants to ensure that all applicants fully understand the true value of the card and rewards.” –Chase spokesperson

Trying to cut through the “spin”, Mouse Print* replied to Chase: “There is PLENTY of room to add ‘up to’ in that ad! The question is ‘will you’?”

The company wrote back:

“Up to” is not accurate, though. Customers earn the full 3% on their spending in the select categories, so it’s not an “up-to” and then they earn a full 1% on everything else from the first dollar they spend. We will do our best to make sure that it is more clear.

I could have replied that “up to 3%” is absolutely accurate for the ad they published because there is no mention whatsoever in it about that rate only applying to certain categories. I resisted, and will just leave it to the reader to imagine whether Chase is really inclined to fix their ad.

One other word about the email exchange with Chase. Attached to one of the emails from Chase, clearly by mistake, was a document listing the times over the past several years that I was quoted in major media. It listed the full text of these articles including ones from local television, Chicago Tribune, Fox Business, Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Daily News, etc. Nice to know that Chase PR folks do a little investigation into the reporters or editors who pose questions to them before they respond.