Stripped Tease - low-interest rate offers from credit card companies - Brief Article

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Magazine, Sept, 2001 by Catherine Siskos

Teaser rates on credit cards are attractive to cardholders, but they're losing their appeal to card issuers--especially now that they have dropped as low as 0%. To get that deal, you may need to transfer a balance, and you must have a squeaky-clean credit record. Capital One, which pioneered the teaser rate, is abandoning it in favor of cards with fixed rates as low as 10% for certain customers.

You can still chase teaser rates, but you'll have to run faster. Issuers are shrinking the period for which the rates are in effect from six months to as little as two months. Then the rate can pop up to 15% or more.