Micdiddy wrote:I thought 24 in LR1 was an incredibly deceptive answer and I would like to address it:
First of all, upon first reading I choose B because it fit nicely in the blank and seemed to follow logically from the premises. Upon second reading, I decided that B was concerned with what should be credit card companies "selling point" whereas the stimulus clearly states "credit card companies tend to concentrate on improving the services their customers are the most interested in." It doesn't say they highlight those services when selling, it only states that they improve them. If this is of primary concern, wouldn't to conclusion logically have to be about companies not improving interest rates or improving something else about their business?
Then I saw E, which seemed implausible at first because it says "the most intense competition..." which as a savvy LSAT taker I know is difficult to prove and to never choose answers with such strong language unless specifically substantiated by the stimulus. Comparing it to the stimulus though I saw that 59% of their customer were "intending to use the cards only to avoid carrying cash and writing checks..." meaning avoiding carrying cash and writing checks must be these customers primary concern.
Now, since we know companies primarily care about improving services their customers are most interested in, and we know a majority of their customer must be most interested in using cards to avoid cash or checks, doesn't E extremely logically follow this train of thought?
It's not worded as nicely, and it wasn't my first guess, but I have never seen so much evidence for a supposed wrong answer before now. Please help me!
I felt that this problem was tricky, but not exceedingly so. In my initial read of the answer choices I was able to narrow it down to B and D, which I know is different from what you did, but I will tie it all back together as I go through the answer choices.
The stimulus tells us something along the lines that the large portion of consumers anticipate paying off their credit cards before interest begins to accumulate. In then tells us that the primary reason why they do use credit cards is to avoid having cash or checks on them. Understandable, who carries cash these days anyways? The stimulus brings the above together by stating that in order to gain a large share of the market credit card companies then to focus their efforts on improving services that their customers would be most interested in. Simple enough:
(A) This answer choice is at best unsupported. There maybe factors that do make customers care about which company they use.
(B) keep for now since we both had this answer choice as a "champion."
(C) This answer choice is a bit tempting, but the more we look at it the less it is compelling. This answer choice tells customers have a preference to paying the credit interest rather than
acquiring money from bank loans. The stimulus didn't really tell us anything about the preferences of the customers in relation to where they obtain their money and if they prefer this to credit interest payments.Out of scope.
(D) For me this answer choice was tempting, but in the end it is not credited. This answer choice tells us that they would ignore time before interest kicks in. This doesn't seem right. They plan on paying their balance off before that time, so know just how long they have until that period would be something that they would want to know.
(E) As you stated in your original post, this answer choice is extremely strong. Saying that this point would be the most intense area of competition between the companies is bold. Furthermore, we have no idea if this is an area in which customers "are the most interested in." In the real world this might be an assumption that we could make, and the real why no uses American Express anymore. However, this goes a little far for this question. The only thing we know for sure about the customers and their preferences is that they plan on paying off the balance before the interest kicks in and they don't like carrying cash/checks. This answer choice would require us to make a pretty health jump and impose preferences on the customers that we just can't do.
Back to answer choice B:
B matches a key piece of evidence that was used in the stimulus-people plan on having the balanced paid off before interest rates kick in. Thus, for these people in this argument, the interest rate really doesn't matter to them. They are never going to making interest payments (at least they don't plan on doing so).
I hope this helps! Let me know if I can clarify anything for you. BTW, I didn't glance over the Manhattan forum before posting this, so if it is repetitive forgive me.
