Select AT&T; Customers Get a No-Fee Card : Telecommunications: Certain people are being offered the combination Visa-MasterCard and phone cards with no annual fee for life.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — AT&T; is continuing to quietly offer selected new customers credit cards under a program that offers cardholders no annual fee for life, company officials said Friday.
In another development, a well-placed industry source said AT&T; plans to announce an aggressive campaign Monday designed to lure credit card consumers from other issuers. AT&T; is expected to let consumers transfer balances from high interest-rate credit cards to the lower rate Universal Card.
Other perks will also be offered to lure customers to switch, the source said. AT&T; could not be reached after business hours for comment.
In March, 1991, AT&T; let the no-annual-fee credit card expire after it had been on the market for a year. New cardholders were charged a $20 annual fee. But AT&T; Universal Card officials said Friday the company was selectively offering the combination Visa-MasterCard and long- distance telephone cards to new customers with no annual fee.
“It enables us to enter into some pockets of opportunity,” said Bruce Reid, a spokesman for AT&T; Universal Card in Jacksonville.
Reid would not say who was being targeted or how many potential customers had been contacted or had signed on.
“Unfortunately, that gets into some proprietary information, competitive information,” he said.
AT&T; Universal is now the third-largest credit card issuer in the United States, behind Citicorp and Chase Manhattan Corp., in terms of total accounts and number of cards issued, Reid said.
Although a number of smaller issuers have tried to take market share by offering credit cards with rates as low as 8.5%, the largest issuers continue to charge a much higher rate, exceeding 18%.
When the AT&T; Universal Card was first issued two years ago, it was at an annual interest rate of 18.9%, Reid said.
The 8.5 million charter members, or those who joined in the first year of the program, are now offered a 16.4% interest rate. The company’s 4 million non-charter members, or those who joined in the last year after the no-fee program expired, are offered a 17.4% interest rate.
