Credit Card Tyranny To Be A Thing Of The Past Soon

Hey credit Card companies! Some amongst you, who were taking advantage of consumer crediting systems, may not be able to take them on a ride in a few days from now. The federal government has decided to trim off your customer abusive policies with the new Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009. This has no doubt been not taken well by many financial lending agencies, especially banks apart from credit card companies. But they hardly have anything to do because they just have a few months to satiate their greed because February is just round the corner! A New York Times report has got more stuff on this. But it seems the credit card companies are trying to lick off the last bit of whatever’s left of their greedy cake in the last couple of months before that. In that attempt, they have come up with some plans.

Last Minute Interest Hikes

As customers say, in the last 8 months of this year, it’s been observed that the credit card interest rates have been hiked rapidly (by about 20 %) without sufficient convincing reason. Pew Trust and New York Times have got some interesting reports on consumers complaining about the interest being made almost double in the last few months.

Compulsory Enforcement of Overdraft Fees

An overdraft fee is the fee you pay for crediting more than your balance amount. According to the CCARDA 2009, the overdraft fee is not charged by default. A customer has the option of choosing it. A customer who does not choose it cannot credit more amount than his balance. This seems to be fair enough. Banks and crediting companies make a lot of profits with overdraft fees. So, now in the last few weeks before the enforcement of the law, they have hiked up the fee by about 35 %. Now they are compulsorily extracting overdraft fees from customers in every possible way because a few months later they will not be able to do so under the enforcement of the new law.

Altering Due Dates Without Notice

Due dates are being altered by many credit card companies to extract high late fees. Money Under 30 has got the report on how a leading credit card company is changing due dates without notice. The customers have to pay up a big amount of late fee and also have to pay an increased interest rate permanently after they miss out on their due date of payment. The CCARDA 2009 makes it mandatory that bills should reach the customers at least 21 days before the due dates.

Lowering Consumer Credit Limits

Banks are lowering the consumer credit limits as they can charge higher interest rates. But this lowers the credit score of many people who’ve maintained a good track record of credit payments.

Universal Default Credit Implementation

One of the most irrational penalties of credit card payments is that if you miss paying out on one of your credit cards, the penalty will be reflected on an other credit card of yours. For example, if you forget to make a monthly payment on your Visa card, the monthly interest rate of your MasterCard  credit card will go up.