Credit Card Companies Are Bending The Rules
Filed under: Banks, Credit, Fees, Finance, Interest Rates, Spending
According to this Wall Street Journal Article Beware That New Credit-Card Offer the credit card companies are pushing cards that don’t have all the protections that the Card Act or Credit Card Accountability and Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009 gave consumers. Of course the companies claim they aren’t offering business cards to individuals but why believe them. They’ve shown how they feel about their customers in the past.
You really should read the entire article and pay attention to the offer you apply for.
I just read this article on Yahoo and the thing that interested me the most was the part about people feeling a sinking feeling when they see how long it’ll take to pay off their balance. It’s not like everyone hasn’t heard that it’ll take forever to pay off a balance by paying minimum payments, so either the people who will get the shock, weren’t paying attention or were in denial.
The article also covered ways that the law backfired like:
New CRL Report: Credit Card Issuers Use Loopholes to Bypass New Rules Intended to Curb Abuses
Filed under: Banks, Credit, Education, Fees, Interest Rates, Uncategorized
I think we all expected the credit card companies to find loopholes and continue to abuse the American people so finding this US Newswire article didn’t really surprise me.
New CRL Report: Credit Card Issuers Use Loopholes to Bypass New Rules Intended to Curb Abuses
According to a report from the Center for Responsible Lending, the credit card issuers are making it all but impossible for the average person to know what the real cost of their debt is.
Some of the items that were mentioned were
Debit Card Overdrafts Generate Massive Profits
I just read an interesting story that says that banks collect more in overdraft fees from debit cards than they do in profit. The article points out that some banks make it difficult or impossible to opt out of the service. There’s a lot of mixed reactions about this article and I have mixed emotions about this myself.
The Banks Aren’t Telling You Everything or We’ll Change The Rules When We Feel Like It.
Filed under: Banks, Credit, Fees, Interest Rates, Rant, Spending
I ran across this story over on MSN.
10 Things Your Bank Won’t Tell You
One of the things it talks about is something I’ve suspected for a long time, some (if not all) banks post the big charges first, then the smaller charges and this of course increases the likelihood that you will have more overdraft fees. They claim that they do it for your benefit because a mortgage payment is more important than other payments. Maybe it is, but so is the multiple fees to their bottom line. If someone is already running on empty, an extra 100 bucks a month like the mother of three in the story is going to make things even harder. 100 bucks sounds like a lot but remember it’s only about 3 overdraft fees. Granted, we shouldn’t be running that close to empty, but things happen especially in today’s economy.
Another thing the article talks about is how banks can change the terms at any time. Take for example Bank Of America jacking the rates from 10%-12% to 27% or more even though the affected customers had done nothing wrong. They claim 94% had no increase last year. So just how many customers is 6%??? Well, their website says they serve approximately 53 million consumer households and I’ll guess some of those households have multiple people/accounts, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s go with 50 million which gives us 3 million affected customers. So you have better odds of having your rates tripled than you do at winning the freaking lottery even if you do nothing wrong. I wonder if the way they choose who gets nailed has anything to do with my paranoia from a few days ago when I asked if you were feeling paranoid yet.
So for crying out loud, keep your checkbook balanced and don’t count of the float time that we used to have. With the advances in technology, there isn’t much time left. Postpone buying whatever shiny new toy that is calling your name and build up a cushion.
If you must use credit then Compare Credit Cards and get the best rates you can.
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