Okay well until a few days ago I had a NextCard Visa, and because the bank behind it failed, my only remaining card is my American Express Blue. Since half the world doesn't take AMEX, I need a new VISA/MasterCard. I know there are sites out there which rank cards and describe them, but there are so many hundreds and thousands of various cards, and often it's hard to find good ones. So I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions...

My credit is excellent. I always pay my bill every month, but I would like a low APR in case I ever need to carry a balance. I don't want an annual fee, and I don't really care about frequent flyer miles or anything, though I like good rewards programs where I can earn free stuff. Any cards with any kind of price protection or warranty doubling like my AMEX Blue card has would be great, too.

It pisses me off because I had no idea this was coming, and my VISA just stopped working. I get hundreds of credit card offers in the mail each month and end up throwing them out.. Guess I'll have to start reading them. But if anyone knows of any good resources to find cards, or can recommend a good card, let me know.

Avoid the GM card. I've personally had good experiences with HSBC and Citibank.

You might want to check out Bankrate.com They have some good info. I thought they used to list comparisions, but I can't seem to find it now...

I have a Chase Continental card (gives me miles on the airline that monopolizes the local airport hub). I pay something like $50/year. Similar cards are available for all the other major airlines. Particularly given all the business purchases that I make on the card, the kickbacks really do add up to be worth more than the anual fee.

Another nice bonus of the card: since I also have a Chase bank account (since my employer has a deal with them), I pay a monthly fee ($6, I believe) that allows me to do unlimited checkwriting with Quicken, and download my statement information directly into Quicken for both the checking account and the credit card. It's exceptionally convenient.

If you really don't care about the airline miles, I'd still look into the Quicken support. It's just amazingly pleasant to have the data entry done automatically.

It all depend on what your looking for.
I washed up on the shores a short while back and had to get all that and more sorted out in short order. Fleet would have been the obvious choice, but I lucked out and went with a credit union that was available due to my work location.

Anyway to cut a long story short, I currently pay 8.65% intrest (prime +3.9%), have no annual fee and get zero fluff.

These link might prove useful, lifted from another site.
information on credit cards and managing debt www.truthaboutcredit.org
information on good financial practices www.consumerfed.org
for help in choosing a credit card www.bankrate.org (a commercial site)
edit - ops! this last link seems to be dead

I carry a lot of cards (but I don't carry a balance). So, it is beneficial for me to have as many cards without a yearly fee as possible. I have the Chase Continental Platinum mentioned in another post, but it's fee is $70 per year. The only reason I carry it is because I travel often enough to justify it.

I also have a Sony Citibank card. It has no yearly fee and I would recommend it to anyone that buys Sony merchandise. I have saved over $600 in the 2-3 years I've been carrying it. Every $1 you spend gets one point. When you are ready to redeem points, every 100 points is good for $1 off Sony products. And you buy the Sony merch anywhere you want.

I have a friend that has a Buy.com card from First USA. He likes it a lot, but I am not sure if they are accepting new accounts anymore.

I would stay away from Citibank cards. They are very unwilling to work with you when you need them to and I have had a few run ins with them.

Whatever you do, stay away from Providian.

tanstaafl.

Hah. They're the only people that would give me a credit card a few years back (probably still would be if I didn't already have one ). I've never had any problems with them, other than the bill coming due about a week after you receive it. And a high interest rate, but I can't expect any better right now.

Edit: What kind of problems have you had with them? (So I can avoid those situations.)

I've had a Capital One card for a while and have been quite happy with it. They've been very helpful by reversing charges for me three times so far (all three were DSL providers that screwed me, but I won't go there ).

I would stay away from Citibank cards. They are very unwilling to work with you when you need them to and I have had a few run ins with them.

I haven't had a problem with Citibank, but I should note that I haven't particularly needed any customer service from them. They did offer me a deal after I transferred a balance away from them with a low APR for "the lifetime of the balance" so I now have a bit of debt parked on their card at a lower rate than my mortgage, and stopped making charges to it.

On the other hand (and this doesn't help tony) I have an "Amtrak Guest Rewards" card which I have now earned half of my intended "free cross-country round trip in sleeper" trip on, in about 10 months, and it's from MBNA. They came through the one time I had a problem.

Edit: What kind of problems have you had with them? (So I can avoid those situations.)

Even though I have no actual first-hand experience with Providian, I do have some second-hand experience (through people I know), and their experiences have been enough to convince me to stay away.

Providian is infamous for using every legal and semi-legal loophole possible to maximize the amount of service fees paid by the card holder.

The annual fee is high and apparently subject to change once the user has a balance and is "trapped" into keeping the card. There is no grace period for payments, so you pay interest from the moment of purchase. And be late or miss a payment, and the penalties can be staggering -- I know one person whose penalties eventually came to more than the amount of the purchases -- amounting to literally thousands of dollars.

I have heard that they have relaxed these onerous policies somewhat after losing a few class action lawsuits. But based on their past history, I would tell someone to avoid them if I were he.*

tanstaafl.

*Bitt -- note the correct usage of the nominative case of the pronoun, required by the use of the subjunctive in this sentence structure.

note the correct usage of the nominative case of the pronoun, required by the use of the subjunctive

Whoa! Subjunctive!
And I thought I was the last one alive to still use it.

music (Chairman of COCATA "Keep obsolete cases and tenses alive.")
-- while still maintaining title of Supreme Galactive Overlord

P.S. Anyone else remember Hofstader and SubjuncTV ?

(Chairman of COCATA "Keep obsolete cases and tenses alive.")

Umm... shouldn't that be "Ceep obsolete cases and tenses alive." ?

tanstaafl.

Uhhhh, er, I was using the French spelling. Yeah, that's it.