Banks and Card Issuers Find Clever Ways Around CARD Act Rules.
Of course the credit card issuers are devising all-new fees to replace the ones that were banned by the Credit CARD act. Anyone could have seen that coming. Of course, they also raised everyone's interest rates in anticipation of the law going into effect. So here we sit with a new law coming into effect that was meant to protect us from creditor abuses, but has ended up making everything worse across the board. I'm inundated with complaints about credit card companies jacking up the rates on people who have been paying their bills on time for years.
So what to do?
1). Stop doing business with credit card lenders. I really don't want to sound like Dave Ramsey, but we must simply stop associating with these companies.
2). Stop voting for idiots who pass laws that any chimpanzee could tell you are not going to make a damn bit of difference except to make everything worse for everyone.
I've said before, what we need is strict contract enforcement. Credit card agreements are a joke; when one party in the contract can re-write its terms at will, the agreement is useless. We need credit card agreements that can't be changed without the written consent of both parties, and if one party refuses, the account must be closed. It's that simple. That way, if the creditors push too far, they go out of business. The Credit CARD Act is an inconvenience for them, nothing more. I wouldn't be surprised if they end up being more profitable going forward, as they don't seem to find it necessary to compete by offering more favorable interest rates, and they clearly don't place any value on long-time customers with good payment histories. The Credit CARD Act just gave them the excuse they needed to squeeze us all a lot harder.
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