Just as the 1960s are now looked back on as the glory days of free love, so will the first few years of this decade be looked at as the glory days of free credit. There was a time not so long ago when it was virtually impossible not to get into huge but interest free debt, and anyone without ten credit cards was looked upon as some sort of dangerous retrograde.

Rates tarts were the new Beatles groupies, flitting between cards like young lovers, enjoying the zero per cent introductory rate and then departing for pastures new. No one got hurt, everyone had fun, and no one had even heard of the credit crunch.

These days seem to be at an end however. Many credit card companies are withdrawing their offers and tightening conditions, and moving between cards is neither as easy nor as cheap as it once was.

“Balance transfer fees have increased with many being uncapped, lenders have tightened up their credit scoring criteria, so you need an almost spotless credit history to get your hands on one of these deals,” Samantha Owens of Moneyfacts.co.uk

“Lenders recoup their costs and start to make their money once the card reverts to the standard purchase rate after the introductory balance transfer term has ended, so you need to be aware of the ‘revert to’ interest rate, as some of these can really hit your wallet hard.”

This is not to say that zero per cent offers are impossible to find however. Virgin, Mint, Egg, Lloyds TSB and Abbey all offer zero per cent interest on balance transfers for at least 12 months, and HSBC charge you only 2.9 per cent for the first two years. There are still plenty of options out there for rates tarts, so long as they are able to obtain credit in the first place.

Egg dumped 160,000 of its less profitable customers last month, and many are concerned that this is a sign of a growing trend. Build up a big overdraft now and it is possible you will be unable to clear it with a zero per cent balance transfer in a year’s time.

So have people looking to get into the rate tarting game missed the boat? Probably not, though it would be prudent to suggest that boat is now sailing on some fairly choppy waters. No one can predict exactly what economic conditions will be like in a years time, but it would make sense to not have too severe an overdraft entering 2008 in case interest rates prove prohibitive.

And if you are going to take the plunge then shop around a bit. A recent survey suggested that 30 per cent of people actually explore the market before signing up for a deal, and with comparison sites now pretty much outnumbering people in the UK, there is no excuse for doing at least a little homework.

“No one wants to throw money away, but consumers who don’t shop around for credit cards are doing just that,” said Office of Fair Trading chief executive John Fingleton. “It is essential that consumers are given the right tools to make comparisons between credit cards more easily.”