{"id":721,"date":"2010-04-10T03:13:01","date_gmt":"2010-04-10T03:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=721"},"modified":"2010-04-12T04:31:57","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T04:31:57","slug":"when-an-industry-sponsors-a-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/?p=721","title":{"rendered":"When an industry sponsors a study"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This has got to be the most laughable report I have seen.\u00a0 The Gerson Lehman Group recently released a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pivotalpayments.com\/ca\/industry-news\/report-finds-prepaid-cards-are-costeffective-convenient-19711675\/\" target=\"_blank\">study<\/a> that claims that prepaid cards are more cost effective than a checking account.\u00a0 They compare a checking account, at $300-$400 in annual fees to a prepaid card with $150-$250 per year in fees.\u00a0 I am guessing they chose a specific financial scenario that made the cards look more beneficial.<\/p>\n<p>The other big things they left out:<\/p>\n<p>A checking account builds a credit history, prepaid cards not so much<br \/>\nA checking account, you know, allows you to write checks<br \/>\nThere are many many checking accounts that have NO fees<br \/>\nChecking accounts are safer and include FDIC backing<br \/>\nInability to reject unauthorized charges on prepaid debit cards<\/p>\n<p>But don&#8217;t just listen to me, read Consumers Union&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&amp;source=web&amp;ct=res&amp;cd=7&amp;ved=0CCIQFjAG&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.defendyourdollars.org%2FPrepaid%2520WP.pdf&amp;ei=1vXBS_OODNOCnQe--435CQ&amp;usg=AFQjCNFPEGesHVzmZEFjqG7_llCP4OYVBw&amp;sig2=9GoAaaMMNr0cBTfef9ctYQ\">assessment<\/a> of prepaid card.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This has got to be the most laughable report I have seen.\u00a0 The Gerson Lehman Group recently released a study that claims that prepaid cards are more cost effective than a checking account.\u00a0 They compare a checking account, at $300-$400 in annual fees to a prepaid card with $150-$250 per year in fees.\u00a0 I am [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fees-breakage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=721"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":723,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721\/revisions\/723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.giftcardadvocate.org\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}