This brilliant ad from Barclays Bank for their credit cards would like you to believe that you are in total control. However, dig deep and you’ll find this:

Barclaycard Gold Card

Our fee free for life Gold card gives you simple options to tailor the card to your needs. Choose between a minimum monthly payment of 5%, 7%, and 10% of your balance, determine your billing date and adjust your credit limit to manage your spendings.

Barclaycard Smart Budget Card

With Barclaycard Smart Budget you won’t have any nasty surprises. You decide how much you can afford each month and only need to pay that amount, regardless of how much you spend. As with all credit cards by Barclaycard, you can also choose your billing date.

I am being encouraged to spend on my credit card and then conned into believing that I am in total control of the situation by paying 5%, 7%, or 10% of the outstanding balance as minimum monthly payments. The naked truth is that when you make a single minimum monthly payment you’re transferring 100% of the control to Barclays Bank. It’s a lost battle from this point forward.

And which bank so far has set the credit limit that you asked for? I don’t carry a credit card simply because of the ridiculous credit limits that banks choose to set on my behalf. One bank set my credit limit at Rs 148,000 when I had asked them to set it at Rs 25,000. I’d be delighted to own a Barclaycard with a credit limit of Rs 10,000. Then again, I don’t fall within their definition of a customer-in-control.

What do you think?