Paul, I really understand your frustration in your individual case. The hard part is, for the person on the other end: For every person telling a true story, there are at least 100 lying about some made up family crisis.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but the people ejudicating your sister's case would need to be psychic. And a REALLY good one, too.

As for college credit cards, Citibank charges 15.74% after 6 months of zero interest ... with a 25 day free grace period each month. And yes, I was curious enough to look it up on their site .. this was their college student credit card.