Credit cards; depending on your viewpoint, they are either tools of the devil or a modern fact of life when it comes to money!

And as if is isn't difficult enough to pay the cards off , it appears that the major credit card companies have been finding ever more sneaky ways to impose fees on us all!

It is claimed that the credit card companies have raised numerous charges for those of us using our cards in the past year. It appears that the cost of using a card adds up to more than just the interest as the card providers are keen to make money out of us all!

The consumers' association Which? says that since the Office of Fair Trading ordered a cut in default fees to £12 last year, "ingenious methods" had been used to recoup the income!

The desire of the banks to recover income lost after the OFT ruling was highlighted by the HBOS group earlier this year which admitted that the cut in the level of credit card default fees would result in it losing £60m in income in 2007.

Among the charges highlighted by Which? in its September issue of Which? Money are low-usage fees, raised interest rates for withdrawing cash, annual fees, and raised balance transfer costs.

But the banking industry denied it had acted unfairly and said different fees were inevitable after the OFT ruling (but what else where they going to say?)

"Credit card providers seem to be resorting to a raft of ingenious methods to recoup lost revenue following the OFT crackdown on penalty fees," said Martyn Hocking, editor of Which? Money.

"We always said that charges would change as a result of the OFT ruling," said Sandra Quinn of the UK payments association Apacs. "We have been much more upfront about how charges are applied - every statement now has a summary box listing charges and key information about charging," she said.

In May, Barclaycard, the UK's biggest credit card issuer, said it might start charging up to 1 million customers up to £20 a year unless they started using their cards more often.

Barclaycard were following hot on the heels of Lloyds-TSB which started levying £35 a year on "low users" back in February.

Northern Rock was amongst the first firms to levy an annual fee and they now charge you £2 a month for their base rate tracker credit card. The Co-op Bank also charges the same amount if you are a user of its Platinum Visa credit card.

MBNA have introduced penalty fees for people they deem to be "inactive" customers; and they have contacted its customers with a credit balance who have not used their card for more than a year to warn them of a £10 penalty.

Barclaycard (still the most popular card) is the latest to threaten us with new fees. It is expected to contact its 1 million inactive customers with fees of between £10 and £20.

And its not just usage fees that are changing; the cost of switching a balance from one card to another is going up; from a typical 2% to around 2.5% or 3%.

Some firms are also changing the way repayments are allocated, so the cheapest debt is repaid first, and others are cutting their minimum payments, so the debt takes longer to repay...and accrues more interest charges!! (the card companies are pretty smart aren't they?!)

But Apacs pointed out that some credit card charges were effectively "optional".

"6 out of 10 credit card users pay off in full each month anyway, so they don't pay some of these charges," said Sandra Quinn.

A big way in which the credit card issuers have saved themselves money is by doing away with their favourite marketing tactic; interest free deals on balance transfers!

Some of these offers lasted for more than a year and led to hundreds of thousands of you becoming so-called "rate tarts"; moving your credit card debts from one card to another on the expiry of each interest free offer! (which was your smart idea!)

Although you can still get some of these deals, they have now become more expensive because card companies now typically charge a transfer fee upfront, usually of 2.5% to 3% of the balance being moved.

And its not just credit card fees that are under scrutiny! The credit card industry is already under pressure to adopt a standard method for calculating the annual rate of interest (known as the APR) being applied to each card.

Following a complaint from Which? in April, the OFT said it would investigate the issue.

Which? complained that there were at least 12 different methods in use for calculating an APR, making the concept meaningless for comparing the real cost of using one card with another!

So, are credit card companies playing fair with us and playing ball with the OFT?

Or are they just finding new ways to make even more money out of us?

What do you think?

Credit card companies still making lots of money out of you!

Have your credit card charges been secretly raised?