When determining which credit card company is right for you, its important to consider everything the credit card company has to offer. Equally as important as a low APR or advanced security features is the credit card companys customer service.
Because most consumers overlook customer service until its too late, we made calls to the top five credit card companies (American Express, Bank of America, Chase, Citibank, and Discover), then ranked them on how well they met the following customer service benchmarks:
Helpful Web sites. First we visited their sites to see how user-friendly they were, and whether toll-free phone numbers were easy to find.
Knowledge of agents. We asked three advanced credit card questions (security features, 0% APR availability, and debt consolidation features), then rated their responses.
Helpfulness of agents. Finally, we assessed our general sense of treatment as valued customers, which went into an overall rating of each companys customer service.
American Express
TIME TO 800 NUMBER: Less than two minutes.
HELPFULNESS OF AGENTS: When we got through, we talked to a helpful and professional...