On Thu, 09 Apr 2015 14:12:11 -0400, "(PeteCresswell)"
wrote:


Given the protections inerrant in credit cards, I can't see why people
use debit cards - unless it's the exposure to risk under most credit
card vendors' business models, which is around the extremely heavy
penalties if/when somebody makes a payment error.



I never make payment errors, since I have all my credit cards set up
for automatic payment. And my payment is always in full, so I never
pay any interest. They are called "credit" cards, but I don't really
treat them as such. I never spend more on them than I can afford to
spend.

Like you, I never use debit cards (except in ATM machines). If you
always pay in full, they have three big advantages over debit cards:

1. As you say, built-in protection.

2. The float on the money charged (although with today's extremely low
interest rates, that's not as meaningful as it used to be).

3. The airline mileage or cash-back feature built into many of them. I
almost always use a card that gets me airline mileage. I use the
mileage only for international travel, and that's worth more than the
cash-back other cards offer.

Automatic payment is another example of how easy online banking has
become. And when my statement comes out, I access it on the web and
reconcile it through Quicken (Quicken's reconciliation is umpteen
times faster and easier that what I did in the days before Quicken; it
takes me no more than a minute or two), so if there is an error in the
statement, I know it well before the payment is made and can take
action (although in all the years I've been doing this, I've never
found an error).