Credit card issuers are falling all over themselves to sign up people with top-flight credit. Of the top four cards suggested by CreditCardOutlaw and CreditCards, two of each came with an annual fee. We weren’t even that thrilled with what some of the sites suggested for people with excellent credit. CreditCardOutlaw only returned three suggestions when we searched for “good” score cards, one of which was a Hilton co-branded card (not good if you’re not a regular guest at Hilton hotels), and CreditDonkey didn’t give us any indication of what kind of credit we’d need to qualify for any cards. ( MORE: How to Vet Student Bank Accounts)ĬreditSesame’s top pick was the Capital One Cash Rewards for Newcomers, which charges a 24.9% APR right out of the gate - even though there were cards with better terms further down the list. Google Advisor’s top four included two cards that didn’t even offer 0% balance transfers - one of the criteria we specified. LowCards also suggested the Discover More card as its number one pick. CardRatings, Bankrate and CreditCards returned us cards labeled as appropriate for people with “excellent credit.” CardHub suggested the Discover More card as its top pick for both credit tiers - a card several other sites classified in the excellent category. When we searched for cards using “good” instead of “excellent” credit as a criteria, the results were a flop. On NerdWallet, even after we clicked through to see more detail about a non-featured card, the site still suggested the featured card we’d passed over. On Bankrate, three of the top four were Capital One cards. A search on CreditDonkey for balance transfer cards gave us a top five that were all Discover cards. On several of the sites, we noticed that the top picks were heavily weighted in favor of just one issuer three of the top four suggestions on CardHub were Discover cards. Is it really a better choice, or is the operator getting paid more to promote the one it’s suggesting? This can make it tricky to figure out a site’s motivation for recommending a certain card over another. These sites tend to rely on affiliate partnerships for their revenue that is, if you click on a credit card being offered and successfully apply for it, the site gets a payment. What went wrong? Here are four areas where these sites stumble. ( MORE: How Not to Sabotage Yourself at Work) More often, there were technological glitches, poor or inappropriate offerings, inconsistent recommendations, and a sneaking suspicion that just about everybody in this business was angling to sell us the same handful of cards. Sometimes, there were a few cards mixed in the results that seemed like reasonable suggestions given our criteria. While a few sites asked us more detailed questions, many didn’t let us search by card type (cash back, low APR, etc.) as well as credit type. That is, we tried to run those two scenarios. We ran two hypothetical scenarios: one consumer with excellent credit shopping for a cashback rewards card, and a second with good credit (in the 700 FICO score ballpark) looking for a 0% APR on balance transfers. TIME Moneyland reviewed 11 sites that offer credit card comparisons:, ,, , /advisor/uscredit,, ,, , and. Unfortunately, when it comes to websites that aggregate and compare credit card offers, this model works better in theory than in practice. Follow tools that let you comparison-shop are awesome: You go to a single destination, plug in a little info, and some app or bot combs the universe looking to match your needs with the best deal.
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