ABSTRACT
When 18-year-old Erian McKinley received a mail offer for a platinum card with a low interest rate and a credit limit of “up to $100,000,” he was delighted. And when a representative of the credit card company called him a few weeks later to repeat the offer, he signed up. But when the card arrived, it wasn’t platinum, and the credit limit was $500. 1 Mr. McKinley did, however, get something valuable out of the deal: an early introduction to the ways that credit card companies and other financial institutions play what amounts to a financial shell game.
