Edit: What kind of problems have you had with them? (So I can avoid those situations.)

Even though I have no actual first-hand experience with Providian, I do have some second-hand experience (through people I know), and their experiences have been enough to convince me to stay away.

Providian is infamous for using every legal and semi-legal loophole possible to maximize the amount of service fees paid by the card holder.

The annual fee is high and apparently subject to change once the user has a balance and is "trapped" into keeping the card. There is no grace period for payments, so you pay interest from the moment of purchase. And be late or miss a payment, and the penalties can be staggering -- I know one person whose penalties eventually came to more than the amount of the purchases -- amounting to literally thousands of dollars.

I have heard that they have relaxed these onerous policies somewhat after losing a few class action lawsuits. But based on their past history, I would tell someone to avoid them if I were he.*

tanstaafl.

*Bitt -- note the correct usage of the nominative case of the pronoun, required by the use of the subjunctive in this sentence structure.