Uncle Sam Wants YOU to Visit Bad Credit Hotel

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The full moon looms in the midnight sky, obscured by heavy clouds. From the skeletal branches of a dead tree a bird of prey calls out, and the iron gates creak open. You trudge up the muddy, overgrown path to the dilapidated hotel and knock on its ivy-encrusted door.

No, it isn’t the beginning a new Stephen King thriller or even yet another “It’s a dark and stormy night” novel. It’s the video intro welcoming you to Bad Credit Hotel, Uncle Sam’s bid at interactive credit education at http://www.controlyourcredit.gov.  

The site design pays homage to Alfred Hitchcock’s scary movie ambience, complete with grainy black and white footage and an element of mystery to boot. Visitors unfamiliar to the dangers of bad credit before arrival will be sure to leave, if not older, at least wiser.

At Bad Credit Hotel, visitors can explore all the ins and outs of the world of bad credit and uncover the many hidden tips on how to improve it. Hover your mouse in the right place, and up pops information on credit counseling, debt collection, and personal bankruptcy; as well as useful tools such as real-cost calculators and debt-repayment analyzers.

The hotel manager, a dignified yet slightly eerie character (who also plays every other character you’ll meet in the hotel, from chimney sweep to “worldly gentleman”), guides you through the interactive credit game and helps lead you to the clues you’ll need to get into “Room 850,” the hotel’s much coveted luxury suite—and of course, the number corresponding to the highest achievable FICO score.

While some visitors might find the Bad Credit Hotel to be decidedly—well, “retro,” the site deserves praise for both design and content. As they progress through the hotel, those with credit concerns will uncover the information they need to improve credit scores. Even those with a sparkling score will find useful information—along with the compulsion to venture deeper into the hotel’s mysterious world.

For example, taking a collect call in the 1940’s style phone booth hooks site visitors up with a voice that offers tips on payments and collection agencies. And don’t forget to check in the phone’s coin return before heading back to the lobby.

A brief conversation with the hotel’s idiosyncratic librarian leads guests to pull library books off the shelves, which open to reveal information on credit history (such as how to get a free credit report and more) as well as bad credit counseling (including what to expect from credit counseling agencies and how to navigate the system).

Waking a snoozing “worldly gentlemen” garners access to a monthly budget calculator that can help cardholders formulate a debt repayment plan. Heading upstairs to dingy “Room 205,” guests will find a real-cost calculator, which reveals that a $1,982 laptop could end up costing a total of $3,834—nearly twice it’s original price—when paid off on a 19 percent APR credit card over the course of just under 4 years.

The main drawback of the site is simply the limitations imposed by Flash, the software in which it is configured: if a visitor accidentally navigates away from the page, all progress is lost. Also, some viewers with older versions of Flash will find the loading time aggravatingly slow.

Fortunately though, the site features a non-interactive file of the information it provides (along with pictures of the game to give the viewer a taste of the ambiance), so those who aren’t “spellbound” by the old film-noir style hotel can extract the useful data on their own terms.