Am I responsible for an annual fee on a credit card I never picked up?
Have you signed anything? If not - then tell them  you don't know who they are and have not agreed to pay. If you did sign that piece of paper at the airport, then you have probably agreed to pay. Either way, it won't go away. As you've already discovered, ignoring things doesn't make them go away. You should make an effort, as hard as it may be, and call them. Notify them that you have never asked for this card, never activated it, and in fact never had it in your possession. You should stress out that it was issued without your authorization, which is probably illegal. And you wish the account to be closed and the charge reversed. Otherwise it will just grow and make your life miserable. In the end, I was not required to pay the fee. After some frustrating initial attempts, I ended up writing a letter and sending a copy to card services, customer support, complaints and the legal department. It basically said: 1 - I never signed anything. 2 - I spoke to a very aggressive person at the airport who told me that she was just taking down my information in order to send information about the card, and that I was under no obligation 3 - I never received a card, activated a card, or used a card. 4 - I want this charge canceled immediately  5 - If this ever shows up on my credit report, I will contact my lawyer regarding this unscrupulous business practice. After that I received a notice in the mail confirming that everything had been cancelled and all charges were reversed.
Some years ago a call center operator told me a bit more than they probably should have.  They like to see a lot of money go through the card, but very little staying on the card. Yes, they make money on the interest but one card defaulting blows away the profit on a lot of other cards. The 3% take from the merchants is both reliable and up-front, not 6 months down the line when (and if) you pay the interest. So if you want to make your credit card company happy, pay your bills in full every month. I have credit far beyond my actual means because I run work expenses on my personal card, I was told they didn't care (and had already guessed) that it wasn't my money. The point was I was handling things in a way they liked. Not quite at Palladium status, but cards with $200 annual fees are mine for the asking, and I haven't paid interest since the early 1990's. This very much depends how you use that second line of credit and what your current credit is. There are of course many more combinations buy you can probably infer the impact based on these cases.   Your credit score is based on your likely hood of being profitable to a creditor should they issue you credit. This is based on your history of your ability to manage your credit.  Having more credit and managing it well shows that you have a history of being responsible with greater sums of money available.  If you use the card responsibly now then you are more likely to continue that trend than someone with a history of irresponsibility.  Having a line but not using it is not a good thing.  It costs the creditor money for you to have an account.  If you never use that account then you are not showing that you can use the account responsibly so if you are just going to throw the card in a safe and never access it then you are better off not getting the card in the first place. "I completely agree with @littleadv in favor of using the credit card and dispute resolution process, but I believe there are more important details here related to consumer protection. Since 1968, US citizens are protected from credit card fraud, limiting the out-of-pocket loss to $50 if your card is lost, stolen, or otherwise used without your permission. That means the bank can't make you pay more than $50 if you report unauthorized activity--and, nicely, many credit cards these days go ahead and waive the $50 too, so you might not have to pay anything (other than the necessary time and phone calls). Of course, many banks offer a $50 cap or no fees at all for fraudulent charges--my bank once happily resolved some bad charges for me at no loss to me--but banks are under no obligation to shield debit card customers from fraud. If you read the fine print on your debit card account agreement you may find some vague promises to resolve your dispute, but probably nothing saying you cannot be held liable (the bank is not going to lose money on you if they are unable to reverse the charges!). Now a personal story: I once had my credit card used to buy $3,000 in stereo equipment, at a store I had never heard of in a state I have never visited. The bank notified me of the surprising charges, and I was immediately able to begin the fraud report--but it took months of calls before the case was accepted and the charges reversed. So, yes, there was no money out of my pocket, but I was completely unable to use the credit card, and every month they kept on piling on more finance fees and late-payment charges and such, and I would have to call them again and explain again that the charges were disputed... Finally, after about 8 months in total, they accepted the fraud report and reversed all the charges. Lastly, I want to mention one more important tool for preventing or limiting loss from online purchases: ""disposable"", one-time-use credit card numbers. At least a few credit card providers (Citibank, Bank of America, Discover) offer you the option, on their websites, to generate a credit card number that charges your account, but under the limits you specify, including a maximum amount and expiration date. With one of these disposable numbers, you can pay for a single purchase and be confident that, even if the number were stolen in-transit or the merchant a fraud, they don't have your actual credit card number, and they can never charge you again. I have not yet seen this option for debit card customers, but there must be some banks that offer it, since it saves them a lot of time and trouble in pursuing defrauders. So, in short: If you pay with a credit card number you will not ever have to pay more than $50 for fraudulent charges. Even better, you may be able to use a disposable/one-time-use credit card number to further limit the chances that your credit is misused. Here's to happy--and safe--consumering!" "Others have commented on the various studies. If, as JoeTaxpayer says, this one particular study he mentions does not really exist, there are plenty of others. (And in that case: Did someone blatantly lie to prove a bogus point? Or did someone just get the name of the organization that did the study wrong, like it was really somebody called ""B&D"", they read it as ""D&B"" because they'd heard of Dun & Bradstreet but not of whoever B&D is. Of course if they got the organization wrong maybe they got important details of the study wrong. Whatever.)  But let me add one logical point that I think is irrefutable: If you always buy with cash, there is no way that you can spend more than you have. When you run out of cash, you have no choice but to stop spending. But when you buy with a credit card, you can easily spend more than you have money in the bank to pay. Even if it is true that most credit card users are responsible, there will always be some who are not, and credit cards make it easy to get in trouble.  I speak from experience. I once learned that my wife had run up $20,000 in credit card debt without my knowledge. When she divorced me, I got stuck with the credit card debt. To this day I have no idea what she spent the money on. And I've known several people over the years who have gone bankrupt with credit card debt. Even if you're responsible, it's easy to lose track with credit cards. If you use cash, when you take out your wallet to buy something you can quickly see whether there's a lot of money left or not so much. With credit, you can forget that you made the big purchase. More likely, you can fail to add up the modest purchases. It's easy to say, ""Oh, that's just $100, I can cover that."" But then there's $100 here and $100 there and it can add up. (Or depending on your income level, maybe it's $10 here and $10 there and it's out of hand, or maybe it's $10,000.) It's easier today when you can go on-line and check the balance on your credit card. But even at that, well just this past month when I got one bill I was surprised at how big it was. I went through the items and they were all legitimate, they just ... added up. Don't cry for me, I could afford it. But I had failed to pay attention to what I was spending and I let things get a little out of hand. I'm a pretty responsible person and I don't do that often. I can easily imagine someone paying less attention and getting into serious trouble." Have you checked to see if anything else went missing? Walmart says that because I was not the original purchaser of the gift   card, they could not help me directly Just to build on what @littleadv already gave you, my personal experience on this is that none of the companies that you'll likely be dealing with in a situation like this will be falling over themselves to help you out. Unless it also helps them for some reason, or if they're compelled by consumer laws.  If you think you should be protected from this sort of thing happening, feel free to reference the FCRA to see if you might get any consumer protections.  But just from what you've said here, it doesn't sound like you do. So if anything else went missing (or even if not), it might have been someone working for Citi, who may have had access to more of your personal information than just your card.  ID theft is unfortunately common, as a fairly easy crime to commit, a hard one to protect yourself against, and a very hard one to prosecute.  When did you last check your credit report? The percentage fee often depends on the type of card. Amex and rewards cards like aeroplan cards often charge 2.5-4% whereas cashback cards will charge less. That's why most places (specifically in Canada which is where I'm from) don't take Amex because they charge way too much. "This is not a normal occurrence, and you have every right to be annoyed, but the technical way it usually happens goes like this: What can happen is when the merchant incorrectly completes the transaction without referencing the pre-authorization transaction. The bank effectively doesn't ""know"" this is the same transaction, so they process it the same way they process any other purchase, and it has no effect on the pre-authorization and related held/pending transaction. As far as the bank knows, you purchased a second set of blinds in the store for $200 and are still waiting on the first order to come in, they have no idea the store screwed up. The reason this is possible is the purpose of the pre-auth in the first place is that it is a contractual agreement between the bank (credit card) and the merchant that the funds are available, will be available except under rare special circumstances, and thus they can go ahead and process the order. This lets the merchant be secure in the knowledge that they can collect their payment, but you aren't paying interest or monthly payments on something you haven't even gotten yet! This system works reasonably well for everyone - right up until someone screws up and fails to properly release a hold, makes a second transaction instead of properly referencing the first one, or the bank screws up their system and fails to correctly match referenced pre-authorization codes to purchases. The problem is that this should not be a normal occurrence, and the people you are speaking with to try to sort out the issue often do not have the authority or knowledge necessary to properly fix the issue, or its such a hassle for them that they hope you just go away and time fixes the issue on its own. The only sure-fire solution to this is: make sure you have so much extra credit line that this doesn't effect you and you can safely let it time out on its own, or stop doing business with this combination of merchant/payment that creates the problem. Back when my credit limits were being pushed, I would never pay at gas pumps because their hold polices were so weird and unpredictable, and I would only pre-pay inside or with cash to avoid the holds." "What would be the consequences if they do realize their error some day   in the far future? You've informed them of the error and they've informed you that nevertheless the points are yours and you should use them. So you have a couple of issues: have you made what your jurisdiction considers a reasonable effort to correct the mistake, and did the customer service rep actually have the authority to make such a large goodwill gesture as letting you keep all the points? The first is your legal responsibility (otherwise you're stealing), and you need to know specifically for your jurisdiction whether a phone call is sufficient. I can't tell you that. Maybe you should send them a letter, maybe you should wait until you've had written confirmation from them, maybe you're OK as you are. You might be able to get free advice from some body that helps with consumer issues (here in the UK you could ask Citizen's Advice). The second is beyond your ability to know for sure but it's not dishonest to work on the basis that what the company's proper representative tells you, is true. With the usual caveats that I'm not qualified to give legal advice: once told you've been clearly told that it's an intentional gift, I don't see any way you could be held to have done anything fraudulent if you then go about enjoying it. The worst case ""far future"" problem, I would expect, is that someone decides the gift was never legitimately made in the first place. In other words the company made two separate errors, first crediting the card and then telling you the erroneous points stand. In that case you might have to pay them back whatever you've spent on the card (beyond the points you're entitled to). To avoid this you'd need to establish what constitutes a binding gift in your jurisdiction, so that you can say ""no, the point balance was not erroneous and here's the legal reason why"", and pay them nothing. You might also need to consider any tax implications in receiving such a large gift, and of course before paying tax on it (if that's necessary) you'd probably want to bug them for confirmation in writing that it really is yours. If that written confirmation isn't forthcoming then so be it, they've rescinded the gift and I doubt you're inclined to take them to court demanding that they stand by the words of their rep. Use them and play stupid. It's not my duty to check their math, right?  That's potentially fraud or theft if you lie. You did notice, and even worse they have proof you noticed since you made the call. So never say you didn't notice. If you hadn't called them (yet), then you've been given something in error, and your jurisdiction will have an opinion on what your responsibilities are. So if you hadn't already called them, I would strongly suggest that you should call them or write to them about it to give them the opportunity to correct the error, or at least seek assurance that in your jurisdiction all errors in the customer's favour are final. Otherwise you're in the position of them accidentally handing you their wallet without realising, and you deciding to keep it without telling them. My guess is, that's unlikely to be a legally binding gift, and might legally be theft or fraud on your part."