Johnmoni:

I am curious if there is a way to use these to our advantage and take back a little from the CC companies. Use their own sneakiness against them.

I saw Dale (Retired2RV) mention something about taking those convenience checks. You do this by writing one for the full amount of your CC limit to yourself and putting it in the bank. It will take 3 or more business days for this to get back to the CC company before they can take it out of your account. If you have a bank that credits your account immediately (My checking account with USBank does not, but my CU checking account does), you can go home, prepay your CC the full amount of the check you just wrote yourself with online bill pay (if your CC allows this). If you have a $3000 limit on your card, it would effectively show up as a $3000 positive balance on your card so that when your convience check hits, your balance is back to zero. Now, the only reason to do this is if you get 1 or 2% back on purchases and cash advances or airline miles for each dollar you spend, or whatever. You just made $60. The only thing I am not sure about it is, normally you would get a 2% penalty (or whatever your card charges) for cash advance. But, because this isn't technically an advance because your just taking your money back out of the card, do you still get charged the 2%?

Now, I don't know if I should have posted this as an idea because someone will no doubt think a great way to scam the CC companies, so I certianly wouldn't endorse it, nor do I think I would actually do it. I am just curious as to whether or not it actually would work.

Brian