10 credit cards that won't rip you off （By Liz Pulliam Weston）

Credit card reform cut off lenders from some of their favorite tricks, like raising your interest rates for any reason (or no reason) and moving your due dates to generate late fees.

But there are still plenty of ways to get taken, including:

* Egregious fees.
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Credit card debt relief? Not so fast

* High rates (and teaser rates that vanish too fast).

* Unrewarding rewards programs that make benefits hard to earn or use, or that come with fat annual fees.

To find a list of credit cards that won\'t rip you off, I consulted with experts at several credit card comparison sites, including CreditCards.com, LowCards.com, Index Credit Cards and CardHub.com.

Their nominations follow. But first, some caveats:

* These cards are available nationally. You may find a better deal for your situation at a local credit union or bank, so it\'s worth checking.

* A card that may be a rip-off for many could still be a decent fit for you. If you charge a lot, for example, you may not mind a tiered structure that gives you a minuscule rebate at first, with a higher rebate that kicks in later. If you don\'t charge much, caps on the rewards you earn may not bother you. If you don\'t carry balances, interest rates may be irrelevant.

Now, on to the experts\' recommendations.
Bad-credit credit cards
Let\'s start with the category where consumers have traditionally been most likely to get ripped off: cards for people with bad or no credit. The worst of these cards featured huge upfront fees that ate up most of the credit lines that were offered, and some didn\'t report to the three credit bureaus -- meaning customers\' on-time payments didn\'t help build their credit scores.

* Find the best values in credit cards

The credit crunch and recession-related defaults chased many subprime issuers out of the market. Those that are left must follow the new rules of the Credit CARD Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure Act that limit fees. But you can still pay too much for a card that doesn\'t help your credit or that charges a sky-high interest rate. That\'s why you\'ll want to check out these options:

Public Savings Bank Classic Secured Visa is a refreshing exception to the subprime market rules, said Bill Hardekopf, the CEO of LowCards.com. The bank charges a $75 application fee but no annual fee, and its other fees are reasonable as well (late and over-limit fees are $20 each). Public Savings reports to all three credit bureaus each month, Hardekopf said, making this a good card when trying to improve your credit.

Like all secured cards, this one requires a deposit to the issuing bank; the minimum deposit is $300 and the maximum deposit is $2,000.

Orchard Bank Classic MasterCard is another good card for rebuilding credit, because it reports to all three bureaus and its interest rates and fees are less punitive than many other subprime issuers, said Ben Woolsey of CreditCards.com. The card you get will depend on your credit scores. If your scores are fair, you would be approved for an unsecured card, meaning that no deposit would be required. Depending on your creditworthiness, the interest rate would range from 14.9% to 28.9%; the first-year annual fee would be between $35 and $74; and a processing fee of $0 to $39 would apply.

If your credit is too bad to qualify for the unsecured card, you would need to make a minimum $200 deposit, but your interest rate would be a variable 7.9%, your annual fee would be $35, and no processing fee would apply.

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Citi Secured MasterCard ties your security deposit of $200 to $5,000 into a certificate of deposit instead of a savings account, so your money earns a higher rate, said Mary Ann Campbell of Index Credit Cards. The interest rate is a variable 18.24%. Your account is reported to all three credit bureaus, and the card can make you eligible for an unsecured Citi Platinum Select card after 18 months. The annual fee is $29.

The fine print: To best rebuild your credit, use only a fraction of your available limit -- 30% is good, 10% or less is better -- and pay the balance in full each month. You don\'t need to carry a balance to build good credit scores.
Low-rate and balance transfer cards
If you carry a credit card balance, you\'ve probably already noticed that the great deals have all but disappeared. Rates are higher, and if you can get a low introductory rate, it usually doesn\'t last long. The fees are climbing, too; balance transfer fees that were once low and capped now can be as high as 5% of the balance, with no limits.

Some good deals still exist, however, including these:

Capital One Platinum Prestige Card offers a 0% introductory rate until June 2011 on balance transfers and purchases. After the teaser rate expires, the rate adjusts to 11.9%. That means the card has a longer introductory rate period than most, CreditCards.com\'s Woolsey said, plus a lower long-term rate. The balance transfer fee is 3%.

Capital One is also the only Visa and MasterCard issuer that waives foreign transaction fees, even eating the 1% fee it is charged by the payment networks. Other cards charge up to 3% for foreign transactions, which now include purchases you make here in the U.S. from foreign vendors. There\'s no annual fee.

Citi Platinum Select MasterCard offers a 0% rate for 18 months on balance transfers and 0% for 12 months on purchases. The regular rate varies by credit quality but can be as low as 11.99%. The balance transfer fee is 4%. Cardholders get a $30 statement credit after making $30 in purchases in the first three months. There\'s no annual fee.

Simmons First Visa Platinum stands out in several ways. It doesn\'t offer an introductory rate, but as Curtis Arnold of CardRatings.com notes, it doesn\'t really matter because the card\'s regular rate is a variable 7.25%, one of the lowest in the nation. Plus, the card doesn\'t charge a balance transfer fee, a true rarity at a time when most other issues take at least a 3% slice with no cap. And there\'s no annual fee. But don\'t expect to get this card if your credit isn\'t stellar, and even then your spending power may be lower than you\'re used to, Arnold warned, because Simmons First National Bank isn\'t known for giving high limits.

The fine print: You need good-to-excellent credit to qualify for these deals, and you shouldn\'t use the good rates as an excuse to carry a balance -- you should use them instead to pay down what you owe more quickly. If you can\'t qualify for a good balance transfer deal, consider a fixed-rate personal loan from a local credit union to help you pay off your debt.

Rewards cards
Rewards cards are another area where card users must beware. Most credit cards offered these days have some rewards program attached, but many make earning or using the benefits difficult, and some have tacked on fat fees that can offset the value you receive. Some have tiered rewards, which means you don\'t earn the promised rebate until you\'ve spent several thousand dollars; others cap how much you can earn.

Some exceptions:
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Chase Freedom Visa earns cardholders 5% cash back in rotating categories such as gas, home improvement and department stores, and cardholders get 1% for every $1 in other areas, LowCards.com\'s Hardekopf notes. There\'s a nice sign-up as well: Cardholders receive an extra $100 cash back after spending $799 within the first three months of the account opening. Plus there\'s no annual fee.

Capital One No Hassle Cash Rewards, unlike many other rewards cards these days, is available to people with only fair credit -- FICO scores in the 620 to 659 range -- according to CardHub.com. The card offers 2% cash back on gas and groceries and 1% on all other purchases. There\'s no limit on the rewards you can earn, the rewards don\'t expire, and you get the promised rebates on all your spending, a sharp contrast to tiered-reward cards that require you to spend a certain amount before the full cash-back rate kicks in. There are no foreign transaction fees or annual fee.

Citi Gold AAdvantage World MasterCard has an annual fee, but it\'s relatively modest for an airline card: $50 a year. And the sign-up bonus means you earn 30,000 American Airlines AAdvantage bonus miles after $750 in purchases within the first four months of card membership, which is more than enough for a domestic round-trip ticket, said Woolsey, of CreditCards.com.

It\'s definitely worth the annual fee just for that initial incentive, he said. Plus, he said, American Airlines allocates more of its seats to rewards customers than any other carrier with the exception of Southwest Airlines, which means you actually have a shot at being able to use your free miles.

Costco TrueEarnings Business Card from American Express is a good fit for small-business owners who shop at Costco, Index Credit Cards\' Campbell said. There\'s no annual fee with your paid Costco membership, and you can earn 4% cash back on gas purchases up to $6,000 (the rebate is 1% after that), 3% for restaurants, 2% for travel and 1% everywhere else, including Costco. Plus you automatically save 3% to 20% on business expenses from a variety of vendors, including FedEx and Hertz, through AmEx\'s OPEN Savings program. There\'s a 0% introductory rate for the first six months that then switches to a variable 15.24%.

The fine print: Rewards cards typically require you to have good-to-excellent credit. They\'re best used by people who pay their balances in full every month, because interest rates tend to be high. You also don\'t want to use these cards if you\'re prone to paying late or going over the limit, since the fees for those infractions can be steep ($39 or so).

（Aboutauthor：Liz Pulliam Weston is the Web\'s most-read personal-finance writer. She is the author of several books, most recently Your Credit Score: Your Money & What\'s at Stake. Weston\'s award-winning columns appear every Monday and Thursday, exclusively on MSN Money. She also answers reader questions on the Your Money message board and helps middle-class families cope at Building a Brighter Future）。