Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2019 March 26

= March 26 =

Publisher
Does Wikipedia have a publisher?2600:6C67:517F:F5E2:C972:A76E:E87D:762F (talk) 01:01, 26 March 2019 (UTC)


 * For the purpose of citations, the articles are the publications, and Wikipedia is the publisher. If you're asking if someone owns Wikipedia, the web domain and trademarks are owned by the Wikimedia Foundation. Someguy1221 (talk) 01:52, 26 March 2019 (UTC)


 * See Citing Wikipedia also, which contains instruction on how to attribute articles you are citing from Wikipedia in your own writing elsewhere. -- Jayron 32 13:23, 26 March 2019 (UTC)

Reverse Credit Card
Please would you confirm if what I heard is true. Someone told me that they had made a significant amount of money by taking out a credit card with say an 18% repayment, but instead of buying tings with the card they just made repayments increasing the balance on the card from £0.00 to + £XX.xx this caused them to earn 18% interest instead of being charged 18% interest. Is this true? Is this possible? If so, why doesn't everyone do this? If not, why not, why can you not do this? Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.131.40.58 (talk) 17:28, 26 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Credit cards do not pay you interest on credit balances. Clarityfiend (talk) 17:52, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
 * You cannot do this because the going rate on lending banks money that you can't even withdraw for 5 years without losing a lot of interest is about 3 percent. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 18:38, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
 * If a credit card offers an initial interest-free "grace" period, one can exploit this by repaying fully on the first due date. The only "achievement" is to deny the bank a short period of interest but likely at a cost to oneself of any fixed fee for the use of the card, and the inconvenience of buying things one might not normally buy. A credit card does not offer any way for the holder to earn interest but maximizes the temptation to borrow money at a high interest rate. DroneB (talk) 00:31, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
 * A credit card doesn't directly offer a way to earn interest, but the typical grace period you mentioned means interest can be earned by keeping the money which would have otherwise been spent directly in an interest bearing account or similar. The time period is fairly short although likely to vary depending on several factors including the norms and laws of where you're talking about. In NZ it's about up to ~55 days (1 month plus ~25 days) which means ~28 days average assuming that the expenses are spread out evenly. Although as you said, this comes with other costs (but also benefits). The interest you will earn is going to be even more dependent although is almost definitely going to be way less than 18%. (It's only likely to be be anything close to 18% if you're in a country with very high inflation.) E.g. here in NZ it will probably be something between 0.5-2.2% annually at the moment. Nil Einne (talk) 04:46, 27 March 2019 (UTC)


 * In the UK many credit cards have a "reward" scheme, typically refunding 0.2-0.4% of your spend at the end of the year which is why I use my credit cards to buy absolutely everything. They don't like it if you accrue credit in your account. One of my banks called me when I overpaid by £100 and said I wasn't allowed to do that.--Shantavira|feed me 10:06, 27 March 2019 (UTC)


 * They are a lot more generous in the US. The Discover Card credit card, for example, provides 1% cash back for most things, and 5% for a different category, such as restaurants, each quarter. That can provide a way to make some money, say if you regularly go out to lunch with coworkers, put the entire bill on your credit card, and have them pay you cash. SinisterLefty (talk) 10:55, 27 March 2019 (UTC)


 * That's a way to get some immediate cash. As regards the "rewards" thing that some cards do, those are essentially rebates on purchases. Paying them off and getting a credit balance isn't likely to get you more rewards. If anything, it's the opposite: They'll have more of your money. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 16:58, 27 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Yes, and my point is that in this way you are getting the rebate from the purchases of others. For example, if the lunch costs $200, and the rewards are at 5% for restaurants, you get $10 back in rewards. If your lunch costs less than that, you've made a profit. You could also combine this with the restaurant customer rewards program, and maybe get your lunches for free, again, getting the rewards from everyone else's purchases, pocketing the entire $10. It's quite a minimal profit, and your coworkers might get wise to this and object, of course. You could also invest the $200 (hopefully not in lottery tickets) until the bill comes due. SinisterLefty (talk) 11:50, 28 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Ripping off your friends is not a good long-term strategy. ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 14:26, 28 March 2019 (UTC)

Can you not then buy a product, get the 5% cash back and then return the item and get you full oney back and thereby make 5% per purchase?
 * It would depend on their rules. Do they then deduct that 5 percent from the value of the return? ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 19:41, 27 March 2019 (UTC)


 * The cash back is reversed when the return is processed. Shops in the UK insist on repaying onto the credit card if the purchase was made that way, otherwise they incur costs.  They will not refund in cash unless the purchase was made in cash.   Dbfirs  19:45, 27 March 2019 (UTC)
 * In my experience, that's generally true in America too, although sometimes a grocery store will refund in cash if it's a small amount. (That probably saves a processing cost.) ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 20:14, 27 March 2019 (UTC)