ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. -- Convenience checks are something we all get from our credit card company.

The special checks are tied to your credit card account and can be used to make purchases or transfer balances.

But the checks can be more convenient for credit card companies and crooks than consumers, reported WGAL-TV in Lancaster, Pa.

Throwing away the checks could be nothing more than handing over a blank check to a crook.

Jill Petronio knows about the dangers of convenience checks.

"You never know. You'd never know these were cashed until it was too late," Petronio said.

Petronio told the television station that during a six-month period, a former roommate took her convenience checks and wrote checks for hundreds and thousands of dollars at a time.

"The over the limit assessed fees you get, the cash advance fees, the finance charges and all that ended up to be about $32,000," Petronio said.

As Petronio learned, there are many fees attached to convenience checks, which are just a convenient way for creditors to make money.

For example, the checks are considered cash advances and buried deep within the small print of your credit card agreement you may find language that tells you, "You have no grace period in which to repay your balance for cash advances before a finance charge will be imposed."

Those finance charges usually start at about 20 percent and can go much higher, and sometimes there is a fee for just using the check -- 2 to 5 percent of the check amount.

Another little known fact about these checks is that although they are attached to your credit card account, they do not give you the same kinds of consumer protections.

If you have a problem with something you buy on your credit card, you have 60 days to challenge the purchase and possibly have the charge removed. If you buy something with a convenience check, you're on your own.

Kathy Roberts lives in a rural area of Lancaster County, and she thinks it might be fairly easy for someone to get a convenience check with her name on it.

"We often have our mail delivered to the wrong address and more often we get other people's mail, so I wonder how much of our mail is being redirected before we actually get it," Roberts said.

Until recently, Roberts fed the convenience checks into her shredder. But a few weeks ago, she asked her credit card company to stop sending her the checks, and they told her she could not opt out.

So, she switched to another credit card company that told her she would not have to receive convenience checks with her monthly statement. That might be the best advice to avoid the financial dangers of convenience checks -- call your credit card company and ask if you can opt out of receiving them.

If you can't stop receiving them, shred them and use the checks only as a last resort for emergency money.

If you do use the convenience checks for a legitimate reason, the credit card company still has the right to decline the check.