Charges on Credit Card

I'm currently with AIB and have a credit card with them. Initially when I got it, they told me to get a gold card as I qualified with my salary and has added benefits etc.. the usual sales speak..

So anyway, I rarely use it, only for online purchases, buying large items for the house or booking hotels, holidays etc.. never even get close to my limit and rarely have more than a few hundred outstanding on it..

One thing I have noticed though is the gradual increase in the fees I'm paying on it and its really starting to p*ss me off.. I rang an enquired about it as I thought they were excessive considering its not the cheapest card on the market rate wise and these additional benefits I can get are of no use to me really so are never availed of, they said they would get someone to come back to me on this, still waiting a few days later..

The main reason I got it was cause it was easy to manage transfers to cover the balances using online or telephone banking etc.

So anyway, questions I have are:

Would you recommend having payment protection on a credit card?

If so, can you get it from another third party? (rather than going through the AIB who basically do it through their own company, ARCLife iirc, so essentially paying them to protect their own card..)

Has anyone used one of these credit accounts that seem to be coming into fashion, if so, are they worth looking into and can they truely replace a credit card or are they more to replace loans/overdrafts etc???

Thanks,

I.C

Payment protection insurance protects the bank, not you! For a few hundred euro outstanding, it is definitely not worth it. It is a money making scheme for the bank - cancel it!

If you rarely use your CC and dont run up balances then payment protection is a total waste of money.